


First Blood

by JanuaryGrey (Jan3693)



Series: The Rise and Fall of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, F/M, First War with Voldemort, M/M, Marauders' Era, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2018-11-07 04:59:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11051817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jan3693/pseuds/JanuaryGrey
Summary: The reality of the war against Voldemort finally hits home for the Marauders when Sirius is captured during what should have been a simple mission for the Order.





	1. Solo

Sirius was sprawled horizontally across the bed, staring up at a thin crack that spider-webbed across the plaster of the ceiling. From somewhere just out of sight he could hear drawers opening and the soft rustle of clothing. He looked away from the cracked ceiling, turning his head to watch as Remus put a carefully folded jumper into the shabby canvas rucksack Sirius was sharing the bed with.

“Stop glaring at my bag,” Remus said as he moved back to the wardrobe. “I’m worried you might accidentally set it on fire.” 

If the rucksack were to catch fire, it would not be an accident. Sirius didn't say that aloud though. Instead, when he spoke, he told a much deeper truth.

“I don’t want you to go,” Sirius said. 

Remus sighed as he turned toward the bed. There was a pressed pair of trousers in his hands this time. His fingers tightened in the material, wrinkling it carelessly. “We've already discussed this,” Remus said quietly.

They had, and yet, they hadn’t. Dumbledore had given Remus a mission; that much Sirius knew, but that was just about the only thing he knew. In and of itself that wasn't new. After almost a year as part of the Order of the Phoenix, Remus and Sirius had both been on plenty of missions for Dumbledore. It had never been like this though. Never alone, and never without knowing where the other was going or what they were doing.

The thought of Remus off somewhere unknown, without any help—without _him_ —terrified Sirius.

Things weren’t getting better out there. Despite all the missions, the pain, the fury, and the time Remus, Sirius, and the rest of the Order poured into fighting Voldemort and his followers, things were only getting worse. The attacks, the disappearances, and the murders were growing more frequent, and more brutal. 

Sirius already felt helpless to stop it, and now Remus was being sent out into the chaos on a mission that was set to last days, and he was going alone. Sirius was going mad just thinking about it. 

“You’re being sent out on your own too,” Remus pointed out.

“It’s not the same, and you know it.” Sirius’s mission was a joke, an obvious dead end—something Moody had cooked up to distract him.

“Dumbledore has his reasons,” Remus said. “Both for having me go alone, and for not telling anyone what I'm doing.”

“Not even me.” Sirius couldn’t keep the bite of anger out of his words this time.

“Sirius, please.” The pain in Remus's voice was thick enough to make Sirius wince. He propped himself up on his elbows to look at his boyfriend. Remus's nerves were showing in subtle, quiet ways, as they always did. He was fussing over several pairs of socks, unfolding and refolding them. “I don't want to fight,” Remus said. “Not now.” 

Sirius wanted to fight though. 

Fighting he knew; he was good at it. It might even make him feel a little better to shout and start a full on row. This, however, was not a fight he could win. Remus was naturally easygoing and selfless, putting the wants and needs of others before his own without a second thought, often to the point of absurdity. However, when he truly made up his mind about something, he was immovable as a mountain and inflexible as iron. 

Biting down his temper and his fear, Sirius pushed himself off the bed. Remus refused to turn or look at him. Sirius could see from the set of his shoulders he was bracing himself for Sirius to yell or snap. Instead, Sirius wrapped his arms around his boyfriend’s waist and leaned close, letting his forehead rest against Remus's shoulder. 

“I don't want to fight either,” he said quietly. “Just…promise me you'll be careful, all right?”

Remus turned within the circle of Sirius's arms and wrapped his own arms around Sirius’s neck. “I solemnly swear that I will be ten times as careful as you ever are.”

“Prick—” Sirius muttered. The end of the insult was lost as Remus drew him into a kiss. It was long, slow, and gentle. They'd spent their passion in bed the night before. Now, they both sought to memorize each other by touch alone. Hands drifted slowly across bodies, legs and chests pressed close together, as tongues intertwined.

Sirius could have stayed that way for the rest of the day, perhaps for the rest of his life, he thought, but far too soon Remus pulled away. 

“I love you,” he whispered against Sirius's lips.

There was nothing Sirius could do but say, “I love you too.”

*

They Apparated together to the edge of an overgrown field in Wiltshire. At the far end of the field sat a small, tumbledown farmhouse wrapped in nearly every protective and defensive charm ever known. As they began the trek toward the house, Sirius could feel the magic like a prickle along his flesh. It grew more and more intense the closer they came until he had to fight the urge to scratch at his skin. Then, with a sensation much like being dashed with cold water, they crossed through the last of the enchantments.

Suddenly, the farmhouse didn't look quite so dilapidated, though it was still old. Remus let go of his hand at that point. Sirius doubted there was anyone in the Order who hadn't put together the truth of their relationship by now, but an open secret was still technically a secret. 

The front door of the little old house opened almost as soon as Remus and Sirius had passed through the garden gate. A stocky, red-headed man in his late twenties leaned against the threshold, cradling a cup of tea as he smiled out at them. There was a wand in the hand not holding his tea. It wasn’t pointed at them at the moment, but Remus and Sirius both knew exactly how fast that could change. The Prewett brothers, despite their wide, easy smiles and gregarious natures, were accomplished duelists. 

“Good morning, Gideon,” Remus greeted the older of the Prewetts as they stopped in front of the open door.

“Morning, lads,” Gideon replied. “You’re nearly late, and how am I supposed to know you’re really the sad, sorry bastards you currently resemble? What did we fight over last time we all sat down for a pint?” There was a teasing note to his voice, but the question was entirely serious. The enchantments surrounding the Order of the Phoenix’s headquarters should have violently repelled anyone who wasn’t a member of the Order, but Moody had demanded they all ask security questions as well. _Constant vigilance_ indeed.

“Well,” Sirius said, matching Gideon’s tone, “I would hardly call it a fight, but we spent the better part of an hour at yours engaging in a gentlemanly debate about whether or not it counts as your sister naming her sprogs after you and Fabian if they just have the same bloody initials. I still maintain that it does not.”

Gideon grinned and took a sip of tea. “You’re certainly enough of a tosser to be Sirius Black, that's evident. How about you, Lupin?”

Remus shrugged. “I maintain the opinion that all three of you are idiots. Also, if you want actual proof I am who I appear to be: You spilled your last ale all over me while trying to jump across the table, and—I can only assume—strangle Sirius for insulting the honor of your dear namesake, _George_.”

Gideon gave them both a smile that was far more genuine, and far more tired, as he stepped out of the doorway to let them in. Remus and Sirius followed him inside. Within, the farmhouse was much larger than it appeared to be from the outside. Undetectable extension charms had turned the original handful of cramped rooms into sprawling spaces capable of hosting the entire Order when needed. Gideon went straight through to the kitchen, where his younger brother Fabian sat at a long kitchen table with his own mug of tea and a stack of parchment. 

Fabian raised his teacup in salute and rifled through the parchment next to him. There was always one—and usually two—Order members on watch at headquarters anymore, keeping track of whatever missions were active, who was where, and generally providing support or backup should it be needed. The Prewetts looked like they’d been on duty all night and were more than ready to be relieved. 

“Remus, Sirius,” Fabian greeted them more tersely than usual. He pulled a particular sheet of parchment out of his stack and checked it over. “Right then, Sirius, you’re off—”

“To Wiltfield,” Sirius interrupted. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and tried not to sound petulant about it. He was certain Dumbledore and Moody had arranged for this mission solely to put an end to Sirius's requests to accompany Remus wherever he was going.

“Right,” Fabian said. “Moody says you're just to have a look around, keep an eye out for anything suspicious and report back. Shouldn't take more than a few hours.”

Sirius nodded absently, and Fabian made a note on the parchment. “Remus...” The younger Prewett looked up at Remus with a slight frown. “I take it you know where you're off to?” Sirius's own thoughts on the matter could have been coloring things, but he thought Fabian sounded disgruntled at the lack of information he had on Remus's mission.

“I do,” Remus said. He shifted the rucksack that hung over his shoulder. 

“Dumbledore's only note here is to expect you back in three days. Sound right?” Remus nodded; a twitch of his fingers was the only sign of his own worry. Sirius wanted desperately to take that hand and squeeze it tight—wanted even more to never let it go. Instead, he settled for catching Remus's eye and giving his best attempt at a reassuring smile.

“All right then,” Gideon said around a yawn. “We'll tell Sturgis and Marlene to expect you back by teatime, Sirius. Send a Patronus if you need help, _either_ of you.” His eyes flicked toward Remus and lingered there.

Remus and Sirius both nodded their understanding and said their goodbyes to Fabian. Gideon, after adding more hot water and a splash of Ogden’s Finest to his tea, accompanied the pair out the back door and down to the designated Disapparition point near a muddy little pond. More goodbyes were exchanged by the edge of the water. Then, with a final look at Sirius, Remus turned on the spot and vanished with a loud pop that startled a pair of ducks paddling across the pond.

Sirius was about to follow suit when Gideon stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “What's the real story with what Lupin is doing?” Gideon asked, nodding to the empty space where Remus had just been. “It's the first time I know of that we've sent someone off without Headquarters knowing where they're going…I don't like it.”

“You and me both,” Sirius replied. “Dumbledore's orders, that's all I know.”

“Dumbledore’s orders,” Gideon repeated, sounding exhausted again. He removed his hand from Sirius’s shoulder with a final pat. “Keep your eyes open, Sirius. I don’t much care for these solo missions, even if we know where you’re headed.”

Sirius did his best to shrug Gideon’s concern off with a grin. “The greatest danger I’m likely to encounter is boredom,” Sirius said. “Moody and Dumbledore just want to keep me busy while Remus is gone.” 

Gideon returned the smile though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Sirius stepped away from him, the fields and farmhouse vanishing around him as he turned.

For a moment everything was crushing and black before it became bright again, though cloudier and a bit colder than it had been at headquarters or their London flat. The town of Wiltfield was dreary and half-decayed, and the neighborhood Sirius had Apparated to looked all but abandoned at first glance. He’d landed in a narrow, shadowy little alleyway between two empty houses with board-covered windows. 

Moody hadn’t given him much to go on. Wiltfield was an old Muggle mill town that had suffered some sort of severe economic crisis about a decade back, leaving entire neighborhoods all but empty, the houses slowly rotting shells. All in all, it seemed like a very unlikely place to find Death Eaters, hiding among Muggle detritus. Mundungus Fletcher had heard some rumors about the area though whispered among his less savory contacts, and Moody had decided they were solid enough to investigate, or at least to waste a few hours of Sirius’s time with.

Resigned to a frustratingly dull afternoon, Sirius tapped a cigarette out of the pack he’d shoved into the back pocket of his jeans. He lit it with his wand before hiding that up the sleeve of his jacket and stepping out into an empty lane. 

To his great surprise, Sirius did find something magical amidst the cramped, shoddy little houses that flanked the street. 

He’d walked several blocks already when he decided he wanted a closer look at a car rusting in the drive next to one of the houses. There was nothing unusual about the car itself, but Muggle vehicles had always interested Sirius, and he’d never been able to poke around an automobile like he had with his motorbike. Lily had a car that she’d inherited from her parents. She had hexed the keys so only she and Remus could drive it though, and Sirius was strictly forbidden from going anywhere near the engine.

As Sirius stopped in front of the car, the breeze shifted a bit, and he gagged. The entire neighborhood looked like it was rotting from the inside out, but suddenly it smelled that way too. He nearly drew his wand, if only to cast a Bubble-Head Charm. Thankfully, the wind died down again, taking most of the smell with it. Following the last trace of the stink, he approached the nearest house and saw a multitude of small, baleful yellow eyes glowering from a large patch of fungus growing beneath the front steps.

Stepping back, Sirius laughed out loud. He recognized the ugly little creatures from an early Care of Magical Creature classes. Bundimun.

This explained everything, he realized.

Bundimuns were horrid pests, but they could be used in quite a few potions, as he recalled. The “suspicious activity” in the area was probably a few entrepreneurial potion makers collecting ingredients. Caught between amusement and frustration, Sirius shook his head, cursed Mundungus Fletcher and Alastor Moody both, and walked away from the infestation. He started down the street again, but, certain he’d solved the mystery, his mind was drifting far away, thoughts following Remus wherever he was now.

He barely made it to the sidewalk before the stunning spell hit him in the back.


	2. Bond & Bundimun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius tries to talk his way out of trouble…It goes about as well as expected.

A sudden, sharp burst of pain jolted Sirius back to consciousness just as someone shouted “Oi! Wake up!” His eyes snapped open, but he saw nothing more than a pair of heavy black boots before everything spun and his vision blurred. Fighting the urge to vomit, Sirius squeezed his eyes shut again and tried to sink back into the darkness.

Another kick, this one landing solidly in his ribs, made Sirius choke and gasp for air, but it seemed to knock reality somewhat back into order when he opened his eyes again. 

“That’s it,” a rough voice said, sounding quite pleased with itself. Warped floorboards creaked as the voice’s owner took a step back, content to give Sirius a moment now that he was stirring.

Everything ached, and his mind felt sluggish and disjointed. He remembered a car…a Bundimun colony… something hitting him right between the shoulder blades…and falling. That was the end of it though. He couldn’t even recall hitting the ground, but the pain shooting through his skull suggested that he’d collided with the concrete head first.

_“Constant vigilance!”_ Moody’s voice barked from somewhere in the back of Sirius’s tumbling thoughts. He’d let himself get distracted, sloppy. Moody was going to skin him alive for being so careless. Provided he lived long enough to give the grizzled Auror the chance.

Drying blood from a cut near his hairline had stuck the left side of Sirius’s face to the dirty wood floorboards. His skin peeled away from the floorboards reluctantly as he rolled slowly onto his back. His jacket was gone, Sirius noted absently, as was his wand, his boots, and even his cigarettes. The last felt especially tragic, because he _really_ wanted a smoke right now.

Coughing and blinking watery eyes, Sirius found he was in what might once have been a parlor or sitting room. The walls were covered in water-stained floral wallpaper that revealed patches of black mold where it was sloughing away from the plaster. Dim light fell in patches from a source somewhere behind him. There was only one door out of the room. It was closed but hung crookedly in its frame and looked far from secure.

The only other thing Sirius could see was a great hillock of a man looming over him. He was tall and broad with blunt, squashed-looking features that gave him the look of having been repeatedly hit in the face with a shovel. His clothing was Muggle, but such a horrendous mismatch of colors and styles he couldn’t have been anything but a wizard.

Sirius stared up at him. “I don’t suppose you could spare a fag, mate?” He croaked with a sheepish grin. “I seem to have lost mine…”

The large, brutish wizard blinked in surprise, and for a moment Sirius thought he was going to laugh. Then his heavy features twisted, and a steel-toed work boot collided with Sirius’s side hard enough to knock him back onto his stomach. The nauseous feeling returned and for a moment his vision went black at the edges. Each breath hurt all the sudden, which he guessed meant there was something wrong with his ribs. 

Trying to relieve a bit of the pressure on his chest, Sirius pushed himself up on one elbow. His hair had fallen in front of his face, and blinking through tangled strands of it Sirius noticed something he hadn’t before. 

A table and a pair of wooden chairs sat against the far wall. Sirius’s leather jacket hung off the back of one of the chairs. The contents of his pockets were spread across the tabletop beside several rolls of parchment, including his cigarettes, penknife, his two-way mirror, and his wand.

If he could get to that table…

However, his attention did not go unnoticed. A huge hand shot down, grabbed Sirius by the collar of his t-shirt and yanked him up off the ground. 

“Oh no,” the shovel-faced wizard growled. “You’re not going getting that back, _mate_. Not ‘til you answer a few questions.”

Acting on pure instinct, Sirius swung at him. His fist caught the enormous wizard lower than he’d been aiming for, colliding with the larger man’s iron-boned jaw. 

Much to his mother’s mortification, Sirius had never shied away from getting his knuckles bloody. From a young age he had thrown himself into fistfights with his brother, his cousins, the young scions of other pureblood houses, and anyone else who angered or irritated him—even when he knew it would be a losing fight. He had no training beyond trial and error, simply throwing punches until he figured out how _not_ to do it. His temper was volatile enough to have given him plenty of practice over the years, and he’d developed a rather good right hook.

It was a simple matter of equilibrium this time. Sirius was half off his feet and entirely off balance, and his opponent had a head of height and three stone of muscle on him. His punch managed to knock the bastard’s head to the side, but the grip on his shirt didn’t falter.

In return, a Bludger-sized fist slammed into Sirius’s solar plexus.

This time he heard a rib snap. 

Choking for air again, Sirius doubled over, only for a second blow to collide with his cheek. Ears ringing and head spinning, Sirius flailed, trying to get his feet under him. Instead he lost his footing entirely as he was shoved into a wall hard enough to dislodge bits of old plaster down onto his head. One of those enormous hands grabbed him by the shirt again as the tip of a wand was pressed to his neck.

Fighting his way out was not going to work, Sirius realized, and without his wand he didn’t have many options left. There was always Padfoot, of course. He would have sharp teeth and claws if he transformed, but even now he hesitated to do that. He’d come to view his Animagus form as a final trick kept up his sleeve. Despite the pain he was in, Sirius wasn’t quite sure it was bad enough for that quite yet. He would, he decided, see if he could still charm his way out of trouble with his nose gushing blood and his brain feeling somewhat concussed.

“OK!” Sirius said. He raised his hands against the wall in surrender. “All right…what do you want?”

The larger man relaxed his grip just a little, releasing his hold on Sirius’s shirt, though still keeping him pushed against the wall with an arm across his chest. The wand held to Sirius’s windpipe didn’t move at all. 

“Ruskin!” The brutish wizard turned his head toward the door and shouted. “He’s up!”

Looking down, Sirius saw that the left sleeve of his captor’s jacket had ridden up in their scuffle. Whoever the bastard was, he wasn’t a Death Eater. The inside of his arm was unmarked by a snake and skull. Of course, that hardly meant Sirius was out of trouble. Only Voldemort’s inner circle were given the Dark Mark, and it seemed unlikely that the man whose wand was still drawn on him just wanted a polite chat about the weather or the local Bundimun problem.

The crooked door opened with a shove and a squeal of rusty hinges, and another wizard stepped inside, rubbing at one eye like he’d been woken from a nap. Ruskin—Sirius assumed—was shorter and smaller than his companion everywhere except around the gut. He had thin, scraggly brown hair, an equally thin and scraggly beard, and wore wrinkled grey robes with his wand sticking out of a pocket.

“Good,” Ruskin said around a yawn. He blinked dull, drooping eyes at Sirius, taking in the blood still streaming from Sirius’s nose and the bruises just beginning to form. “Had a little fun, did we, Knaggs?” He asked, sounding vaguely amused.

The larger wizard shrugged and grinned maliciously. “He wasn’t waking up and I got bored.”

Ruskin clucked his tongue like he was chiding an impertinent child before turning his attention back to Sirius. “So, let’s start with your name, pretty boy?

“Not quite so pretty now,” Knaggs snickered. Ruskin gave him an annoyed glare.

“I—it’s…” Giving his real name was not an option, Sirius knew, but he stumbled over a suitable fake one. Knaggs seemed to take his hesitation as defiance and jabbed the tip of his wand painfully against Sirius’s windpipe.

“Bond!” Sirius gasped, reaching for the first name that popped into his muddled head. “James…James Bond…” The moment it was out of his mouth, Sirius realized his mistake. The name was from a Muggle film Remus had taken him to see at the cinema a few weeks ago. The man in the film had been a spy—a famous one, according to Remus—which made it a stupid, stupid lie.

The two wizards only frowned blankly, and Sirius had to bite his tongue to keep from sighing in relief. Purebloods then. Likely neither of them had ever condescended to see a Muggle movie in their lives, thank Merlin.

“Never heard the name Bond before,” Ruskin said thoughtfully. “You?” 

“Nope,” Knaggs said. “You a Mudblood, Bond?” 

“Half—half-blood,” Sirius said from between gritted teeth. Knaggs and Ruskin both sneered disdainfully. 

Sirius was tempted to ask how many Muggles could be found on their respective family trees, seeing as neither the “Knaggs” nor the “Ruskin” families were counted among the Sacred Twenty-Eight. However, he didn’t fancy breaking any more ribs against Knaggs’s knuckles quite yet.

“And _what_ were you doing skulking around here?” asked Ruskin. There was a smug little smirk on his lips and a canny look in his eyes like he already knew the answer to his own question and was just waiting for Sirius to prove him right. He struck Sirius as a gloater. 

Years and years of breaking rules at Hogwarts had gifted Sirius and the rest of the Marauders with a knack for thinking on their feet especially when creating alibis. He wasn’t exactly in top form though, and when he stumbled searching for a convincing lie, Knaggs grabbed hold of Sirius’s shirt again and shook him like a kitten. “He asked you a question.”

The movement jarred Sirius’s broken rib hard enough to take his breath away, but the bright flash of pain cleared his head enough for an idea to hit Sirius even harder than Knaggs had. 

“Bundimuns!” Sirius wheezed. 

Whatever Knaggs and Ruskin were expecting, that wasn’t it. The two exchanged a flabbergasted look. Knaggs was even surprised enough to pull his wand back enough to allow Sirius to breathe freely.

“What?” Ruskin finally asked.

“I...I work for the Ministry,” Sirius said, the pieces of the lie coming together quickly once he had the foundation. “Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures…Pest Sub-Division. We got reports of an infestation of Bundimuns in the area. I was just looking for them, I swear!”

The story wouldn’t hold water if they pressed him for details beyond what little Sirius could remember from reading _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ years ago. It was the best he could think of on such short notice though, and, well…Sirius liked to think he did his best planning on the fly.

“The bloody hell is a Bundy-whatsit?” asked Knaggs. He gave Sirius a shove to emphasize his question.

“Little green buggers,” Sirius said quickly, drawing on what he’d seen hiding beneath the front stairs of that ramshackle terrace house. “If they’re sitting still they look a lot like a fungus, but they’ve got eyes and lots of little legs…”

Knaggs eased off Sirius a little bit more, almost enough for Sirius to slip out of his grip. He didn’t fancy his chances of making it to the door or to his wand though, not without catching another stunning spell in the back.

“I think I seen something like that yesterday,” said Knaggs. He sounded surprised. 

Sirius pressed the advantage. “Did it smell really bad? Like something rotting?”

Knaggs nodded, as did Ruskin. Sirius gave a frantic nod of his own. “Yeah—that’s a Bundimun infestation right there. More dangerous than they seem too—they can rot straight through a house in weeks. Collapse it right out from under you. They spit acid too! I know a bloke who lost an eye that way…nasty business…lots of blood and pus…”

Sirius felt a surge of hope as Ruskin and Knaggs began to look uncomfortable, a little disturbed even. He did his best to channel Peter, to look small, frightened, and harmless. 

“I don’t want any trouble, I swear!” Sirius continued meekly. “I’m just trying to do my job…but I can forget this entire afternoon ever happened…just go back to the office and tell the boss I didn’t find anything…”

It was a long shot, Sirius knew, but he had to try. He doubted they would actually let him go with nothing but a promise to hold his tongue. What he was really hoping for was that his hasty cover story would buy him enough time to figure out an actual plan to get away, or for the Order to realize something had gone wrong and come looking for him.

Ruskin seemed to think this over, scratching absently at his unkempt beard. Knaggs kept looking between Ruskin and Sirius, waiting for direction. Finally, Ruskin waved a dismissive hand toward Sirius. 

“Someone from higher up the chain is supposed to be in later today. We’ll let him decide what to do with him.” He looked at Sirius and smiled nastily. “If you’re lucky we’ll probably just Obliviate you stupid and dump you outside a pub.”

Sirius paled. _Memory charms can be broken,_ he reminded himself. It was far from the worst thing they could do to him. 

Yet, he couldn’t quell the sudden swell of panic at the thought of someone rooting around in his mind, toying with his memories. So many things could go wrong with those sorts of charms. What if they took more than they meant to? What if they took something important?

His thoughts instantly flashed to Remus, to all the precious memories Sirius had of him. 

“Look,” Sirius said quickly, “I proise I won’t say a word about any of this—I’ll do whatever you want. But you should know that if I’m not back at the office by the end of the day, someone will come looking for me.”

It wasn’t much of a threat, not these days. Mysterious disappearances were becoming more and more commonplace as Voldemort continued to gain power. These two seemed to know it too.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Knaggs said, sounding as cheerful as though he’d just stolen candy from a baby and punched the baby’s gran for good measure. “The entire Ministry could come knocking at the front door and they wouldn’t find you or us.”

Ruskin shot the larger man a pointed glare, and Sirius frowned. What was _that_ supposed to mean? That wherever they were was protected, and heavily so if they believed it could stay hidden from the Ministry. Sirius filed the information away. It might be worth something to the Order, provided he could get out of here with his memories intact.

“What do we do with him ‘til then?” Knaggs asked. He sounded sickeningly hopeful.

“That’s simple enough,” Ruskin said. He raised his wand and Sirius panicked. Suddenly he felt like he was sixteen again, and the hand holding that wand belonged to his mother.

“No! Wait—” Sirius twisted against Knaggs’s grip. 

Knaggs grabbed for his shirt again, but fear seemed to fuel Sirius’s strength. His elbow snapped up into the wrist of Knaggs’s wand hand, knocking it away from his neck. A shower of sparks shot from the end of Knaggs’s wand, burning where they hit Sirius’s skin. 

Swearing loudly, Knaggs abruptly let go of Sirius. Unprepared to suddenly stand on his own, Sirius went tumbling to the ground. He brushed aside the screaming pain in his ribs as he scrambled up to his hands and knees and lunged toward the table and his wand.

Knaggs’s heavy boot swung toward his head at the same time as Ruskin yelled _“Stupify!”_

Sirius couldn’t be sure which hit first.

The result was the same either way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The James Bond bit might be a bit twee, but once it popped into my head I couldn't help but use it.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's read and left kudos, and extra special thanks to everyone who's left me reviews.


	3. Untimely Celebrations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We now interrupt Sirius getting his arse kicked for Jily fluff, followed closely by Jily angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter only had to be rewritten three times and then divided into two separate chapters that had to both be completely reorganized. Luckily, the next chapter is mostly written, and the one after that is about halfway drafted as well, so I should take quite so long again...knock on wood.
> 
> Mild warning for vague references to sex, very mild sexual content, and some swearing.

Lily’s morning had not gone well. She’d spent most of it at her parents’ place, casting protective enchantments over the house where she’d grown up and trying to convince her mum that yes, it was necessary. Her parents had always been as supportive as they could be, proud even that their daughter was a witch, but, at the end of the day, they were still Muggles. 

It was hard for them to understand Lily’s world, and especially difficult for them to comprehend the dangers within it. Evil wizards who wanted to conquer Britain still sounded like something out of a book or movie to them. Her father had even made a _Lord of the Rings_ joke today.

By the time she returned home, Lily wanted nothing more than to spend the afternoon relaxing with a book and a cup of tea, maybe even a bath and a few glasses of wine. With that in mind, she opened the front door, only to be assaulted by a spray of silver and gold. 

In less than a heartbeat, Lily had her wand out and a spell on her lips. Her body-bind curse hit the figure leaping out of the corner right as he shouted, “HAPPY ANNIV—”

James’s limbs snapped to his sides and his face froze halfway between shock and delight as he toppled backwards onto the rug. A bottle of champagne and a small box with a pair of goblin-wrought silver earrings hit the ground beside him, falling from stiff fingers. Realizing what she’d just done, Lily gasped and cast the counter-curse as she ran to her husband’s side.

“James! What were you thinking?” Lily snapped as she helped him sit up.

“My own fault,” James muttered, rubbing the back of his head with a wince. “Should have realized jumping out at you wasn’t the best idea these days…really good reflexes there, by the way.”

“I thought I was about to be murdered!” 

James reached up a hand to pull a thin silver streamer off Lily’s shoulder. Gold confetti was still fluttering through the air around them, catching in James’s unruly hair. “Murdered by the world’s most festive Death Eater,” he said with a grin.

Lily’s heart was still racing in her chest, and she wasn’t quite ready to laugh at the incident. Instead she glowered at her husband and then around at their sitting room, which had been blanketed in a layer of confetti and streamers. There were balloons and flowers as well, and a banner above the fireplace that read **HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!**

“What is all this anyway?” Lily asked peevishly. 

“Anniversary celebration,” James said brightly. His happy expression dimmed when he saw the confusion on his wife’s face. “Lily, did you forget our six-month anniversary?” 

Lily had not forgotten because she had never thought to remember the date in the first place. By their very name, anniversaries were meant to mark _yearly_ occasions, and it had never even occurred to Lily to celebrate a six-month wedding anniversary. It was rather ridiculous, Lily thought, but, looking around the room again, she found her heart melting.

Back at Hogwarts, she had often been annoyed when James had gone to ridiculous, over-the-top lengths to try and catch her attention. However, after she’d started dating him, she found that she rather liked it when James turned his boundless energy and creativity toward impressing her. Of course he would celebrate six months of marriage, she realized. If anything, she was probably lucky he hadn’t sprung a full-blown party on her.

James wouldn’t care that she didn’t have a present for him, Lily knew, as she looked back over the gorgeous earrings sitting in their velvet-lined box. However, she could tell from his faltering smile that he was hurt she hadn’t remembered the date at all. Suddenly, in the back of her mind, Lily recalled a conversation she’d had with Sirius a few months after she’d started dating James. 

_“When in doubt,”_ Sirius had said. _“Shag his brains out, and he’ll forgive or forget anything you want him to.”_

_“Speaking from experience, are we?”_ Lily had teased.

Sirius had shrugged and winked. _“I’ve got about a coin flip’s chance of it working on Remus, but you should have much better odds with James.”_  
  
At the time, Lily had laughed in Sirius’s face, but now…

Before any more of the grin could fade from James’s face, Lily lunged forward, grabbed him around the neck, and snogged him until they both toppled back onto the floor. 

Five minutes later, Lily silently admitted that she owed Sirius an apology…and probably a nice bottle of wine. His relationship advice was slightly underhanded, but shockingly effective.

James lay sprawled half-naked and covered in confetti on the rug while Lily straddled his hips. She broke their kiss, sitting up with her palms braced against her husband’s chest. Below her, James had a blissfully dazed look on his face. Lily grinned and tugged her own shirt up.

She had the blouse halfway over her head when emerald light flashed bright enough to see through the fabric and a whooshing noise came from the fireplace.

“James? Lily? Are you—oh shite!” 

James almost knocked Lily to the ground when he sat up suddenly. “Marlene! What the hell?” 

Untangling herself from her shirt, Lily looked over to see Marlene McKinnon’s blonde head sitting in the flames of their fireplace, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Marlene said again. “I didn’t know—”

“You left the Floo connection open?” Lily asked in disbelief.

“I didn’t know you were going to jump me right on the rug half a minute after walking through the door!” James protested.

“Really didn’t need to hear that,” Marlene said from the fireplace.

“Can we talk to you later, Marlene?” Lily asked testily, knowing her cheeks were as red as her hair right now. 

“Er—I was just checking to see if Sirius was at your place,” Marlene said. “So…is he?”

“ _Really_ , McKinnon?” James huffed indignantly. 

“Sorry, but I had to ask,” Marlene said. Something in her voice shifted, tightened, not like she was disappointed, or even embarrassed anymore. No, Marlene almost sounded like she was nervous.

Lily caught James’s eye and saw the sudden inkling of worry she felt in the pit of her stomach was reflected in his hazel eyes. She scrambled off James’s lap and plunked down in front of the fire. James buttoned his trousers back up and reached for his shirt, shaking confetti off it. 

“You can open your eyes, we’re decent,” Lily said when James had pulled his shirt back on. “Why are you looking for Sirius here?”

Marlene opened her eyes and frowned out at them, concern creasing her forehead. “No one answered when I Floo-called over to his flat. I figured your place was the next most likely spot he could be.”

Lily shook her head. “I haven’t seen him since Tuesday.” She looked to James who nodded.

“Same here.”

Marlene’s frown deepened, and Lily felt her worry grow. Instinctively, she reached for James’s hand and caught it already reaching for her. 

“Marlene, what’s going on?” James asked seriously.

The head in the fireplace bit her lower lip and hesitated for a moment before answering.

“Sirius went out on a mission for the Order earlier today. He was supposed to be back about an hour ago, but he never came through headquarters. We were hoping he’d gone straight home or to yours without checking back in.”

The bottom dropped out of Lily’s stomach. James dropped her hand and shot to his feet. 

“Sirius wouldn’t do that,” he said firmly. 

Lily nodded her emphatic agreement. Sirius could be irresponsible and impulsive at times, but he’d always treated Order business with the utmost gravity.

“Yeah…” Marlene said fretfully. “That’s what I thought too.”

James moved quickly out of the sitting room. Lily could hear him banging up the stairs while she scooted closer to the fire. 

“What happened, Marlene?” Lily asked her friend.

Marlene’s head made an odd movement that Lily interpreted as her shoulders shrugging on the other side of the fire.

“Not entirely sure. I came on duty with Sturgis three hours ago,” Marlene said. “The Prewetts’ notes said Sirius and Remus both left on missions just after eleven this morning. Remus is scheduled to be out for a while yet, but Sirius was supposed to be back after a few hours. We weren’t worried at first, I mean he wasn’t doing much, just scouting some Muggle neighborhood up north, but it’s getting late and we still haven’t heard anything from him.”

“Is there a chance Sirius went to join up with Remus?” Marlene asked. She was choosing her words carefully, Lily could tell, but the meaning was clear. Outside of their closest friends, Remus and Sirius had always been quiet about their relationship, but never very subtle.

Lily bit the inside of her cheek and thought back to Tuesday night when she and James had had the other three Marauders over for dinner. Sirius had complained at length about his upcoming mission over chicken tikka masala and beers. He’d called it a waste of time and had a few choice comments about where Moody could shove his constant vigilance. Remus, on the other hand, had been extremely tight-lipped about his own assignment, which had only seemed to irritate Sirius further.

“I don’t think so,” Lily said. “Not like this. He’d have at least checked back in first.” Even if he’d still been in a mood over his mission, Lily couldn’t imagine Sirius forgetting to report to headquarters or intentionally skipping it. 

“Have you tried contacting Remus?” Lily asked.

Marlene’s disembodied head shook from side to side. “No, we…well, we _can’t_.”

_Not Remus too_ …

Lily felt her heart might actually stop if both of her friends were missing, she’d certainly stopped breathing already.

“What do you mean you can’t contact him?” 

“His mission’s classified by Dumbledore himself, only he’s authorized to reach out to Remus right now,” Marlene said. “There’s no reason to think anything’s wrong with him though!” She added quickly. “He’s not expected to check back in until Sunday.”

The thought of Remus out somewhere alone, likely doing something dangerous, with no easy way for them to reach him did not reassure Lily in the least. 

James strode back into the room at that point, holding a small pocket mirror up close to his face and speaking Sirius’s name into it over and over again. Marlene gave him a puzzled look. “Two-way mirror,” Lily explained. “Sirius is supposed to have the other one.”

“It’s not working though,” James said without looking away from the mirror. “I thought I saw something for a moment, but then it just went back to normal.”

He turned the mirror toward Lily and Marlene, and Lily could see her own anxious face reflected in the silvery surface.

“Something’s wrong with it,” James muttered. He turned the mirror back toward himself and tapped it with his wand before shouting Sirius’s name at it again. A horrible thought dawned on Lily and she scrambled to her feet, yanking the mirror out of her husband’s hands.

“James!” She hissed. “You can’t go yelling like that. If he’s in trouble you could make it worse!” 

James went sickly pale and staggered back a step before collapsing onto the sofa, his head in his hands. Somehow, Lily’s words had made the situation and all the dire possibilities suddenly real to him. Lily wanted to go to him, to pull him into her arms and tell him it was fine, that he was overreacting. They didn’t know anything was actually wrong yet…

The words would be hollow though. It wasn’t rational, but Lily knew deep down that this wasn’t some mistake or misunderstanding. She couldn’t go collapse on the sofa with James though. He was already starting to panic, which meant she couldn’t let herself do the same.

She turned back to the fire. Marlene’s head still hung there among the green flames, looking uncertain. 

“Right,” Lily said. She was surprised by how steady she sounded even as her hands were beginning to shake. “James and I will Apparate over to Sirius and Remus’s flat to check it out in person. Marlene, first thing’s first, contact Dumbledore. Then try Flooing Peter. If that fails, try the Prewetts next—Sirius gets drinks with them sometimes. At the very least they’ll be able to tell you more about what happened before Sirius left earlier. Send a Patronus if you find anything, otherwise we’ll be there as soon as we’re done at the flat.”

Marlene’s head bobbed in a nod. “Sturgis already sent word to Moody as he’s the one who sorted the mission. I’ll call Pete right away. Good luck…”

Her head vanished from the fireplace and the green flames died. Without it the sunny room suddenly felt dark and cold. James had gotten back to his feet, like Marlene he looked relieved to have something to do. 

He took the mirror back from where Lily had set it on the mantle and tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt. Lily caught him pulling it out again and staring imploringly into the glass three times while they pulled on socks and shoes. He didn’t speak Sirius’s name again, but she knew he was watching, hoping to see Sirius’s face. The mirror, however, refused to show anything but James’s own anxious reflection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely kudos and the even lovelier reviews! I love hearing from folks whether you're enjoying things or if you have critiques, questions or suggestions.


	4. A Golden Vessel and a Silver Shard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius tries to improvise by solving puzzles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are five different versions of this chapter saved on my computer. The documents are saved as chapter4, chapter4_new, chapter4_newer, chapter4_newest, and, finally, the version you are reading, chapter4_newerest. That is how many times I had to rewrite this chapter to make the pieces fit together properly.

In the quiet of the moldering sitting room, the snap of a splinter breaking off the slat of a wooden chair sounded almost as loud as an entire tree falling in a forest. Sirius froze, heart in his throat, certain his already pathetic escape attempt was about to be discovered. The sharp point of a broken sliver was jabbing into his wrist, but he bit back a curse, not even daring to breathe.

No hex or blow came at him though, and when he heard the rustle of paper, Sirius slowly lifted his aching head. 

Ruskin was leaning over a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ spread across the table. He had a quill in one hand and was absently flicking his wand in the other. 

“No, that won’t fit…” Ruskin muttered to himself, frowning down at the newspaper. 

Sirius rolled his eyes. When he’d first noticed Ruskin studiously bent over the paper, he’d thought the pot-bellied wizard must be working on something important. Accordingly, Sirius had done his best to listen to every frustrated mumble and whisper, hoping to catch some hint of useful information he could bring back to the Order. It hadn’t taken him long though to realize Ruskin wasn’t decoding messages hidden in adverts or forming secret plans based on the day’s news. No, the wizard was struggling—rather pathetically—with the _Prophet’s_ crossword puzzle.

Trusting that Ruskin was sufficiently distracted searching for a five letter word for _“vestige,”_ Sirius twisted his hands as much as the ropes around his wrists would allow. His fingers felt for the rough, splintered edge on one of the slats that he’d slowly been sawing the ropes against. The piece of wood that had broken off to stab Sirius in the wrist seemed to have taken most of the jagged edge with it. What remained would never be enough to cut through the ropes, he realized. It had been a slim chance to begin with, now it was futile.

“Damn it,” Sirius whispered and yanked at his bound wrists.

_That_ Ruskin heard. 

“Stop it!” He snapped. The tip of his wand tip flashed around the edge of the _Prophet_ as he sent a stinging jinx across the room.

Sirius hissed as it hit him in the arm and raised a red welt across his bicep.

The little prickle of pain was nothing compared to the sharp ache in his ribs or his pounding head, but it tore at his already tenuous hold on his temper. Grinding his teeth together, Sirius barely held back the litany of threats and insults he wanted to spit at the pudgy, grey-clad wizard. He was supposed to be a frightened, mild-mannered Ministry worker, Sirius reminded himself.

Honestly though, he wasn’t sure he could maintain that cover for much longer. 

Once again, he debated transforming into Padfoot and making a run for it, either for the door or for his wand. He’d gone back and forth on the idea since waking to find himself bound to a chair in the middle of the same wretched sitting room. The situation felt dire enough for it now, but two things still held him back.

The first was that he didn’t know what would happen if he changed shape while tied to the chair. His wrists and arms had been twisted behind the back of the chair in a way that was painful and barely tenable for human limbs. Canine legs did not bend that way, he was certain, and it would be just his luck to transform and instantly break or dislocate both forelimbs.

The other reason was Ruskin himself. Despite his apparent distraction—and his utter ineptitude at crossword puzzles—Ruskin had proven several times over that he was quite capable of quickly and accurately firing jinxes and hexes in Sirius’s direction. He was especially twitchy after the incident with the mirror, and Sirius wasn’t eager to pit his reflexes against Ruskin’s, not when he could barely feel his fingers and toes. 

Sirius didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious this last time, but it had to have been a few hours at least. The light coming through gaps in the boarded up window was growing dim, and Ruskin had lit a few extra candles around the room. 

By his best estimate, Sirius had woken up about an hour earlier, called back to consciousness by the sound of a familiar voice calling his name—his _real_ name. He’d opened his eyes just in time to watch Ruskin point his wand and shout _“Reducto!”_ at the little pocket mirror sitting on the table. The mirror had flown into the air and exploded, the glass reduced to little more than dust and pieces of the silver backing shooting across the room like shrapnel. 

The commotion had drawn Knaggs back into the room, and both wizards had yelled and threatened a groggy, half-concussed Sirius, demanding to know what the mirror had been and why it had been repeating the word “serious.” 

_“I warned you people would notice if I went missing,”_ was all Sirius had told them, though he was unable to keep himself from smirking. If James had been trying to reach him through the mirror, then the Order surely knew he was missing. 

Knaggs had backhanded him across the face, nearly knocking him out again, before storming out of the room. He’d been muttering something about “checking the spells” as he left.

Despite the mirror’s destruction, Sirius had felt a renewed sense of hope knowing that people were likely out looking for him at that very moment. However, Knaggs had returned a few minutes later and assured Ruskin that their protections were still in place and there was no sign of anyone around. They were expecting Ministry grunts, Sirius had told himself, not the Order’s well-trained and battle-tested witches and wizards. Still, his captors’ confidence hadn’t sat well with Sirius, so he’d redoubled his efforts to escape on his own. 

Not that those efforts had gotten him very far. 

Closing his eyes, Sirius focused on his sense of touch. He slid his half-numb fingertips along the ropes, searching for the place he’d been sawing against the splintered edge of the chair slat. From what he could feel, the rope had barely even started to fray.

Despair and frustration warred within Sirius’s chest, but he pushed them down. If he couldn’t get out of the chair on his own, then he would just have to convince Ruskin to let him out of it. 

“I have to piss,” Sirius said flatly.

It wasn’t even a lie. Hours spent in captivity had left him hungry, excruciatingly thirsty, and in need of a toilet sometime in the near future.

“Shut up.” Ruskin didn’t even look up from the _Prophet_ as he sent another hex at Sirius. This one hit him in the shoulder and felt like someone had put a cigarette out against his skin. A small smoking hole burned through his t-shirt.

“I’m not joking,” Sirius said through gritted teeth. “I really have to piss.”

“Eleven across…gilded vessel,” Ruskin said, reading a clue from his crossword loudly as if to prove he wasn’t paying any attention to Sirius’s entreaties. If he had counted on common rudeness shutting Sirius up though he was sorely disappointed.

“How many letters?”

Ruskin blinked in surprise at the abrupt change of topic and looked over at Sirius. “What?”

“Eleven across. How many letters?”

Ruskin glared at him suspiciously before reluctantly answering, “Seven.”

Sirius licked dry lips dry lips, tasting blood and wincing as his tongue hit a cut, before he hoarsely replied “Galleon.”

Ruskin looked down at his newspaper, then over at Sirius, then down at the paper again. His brows drew together in consternation. “Really?”

“Really,” Sirius replied. “A Galleon is both a gold— _gilded_ —coin and a type of ship—a _vessel_.” 

“How’d you know that?” Ruskin asked. 

Sirius shrugged as well as he could while tied to the chair. “I’m good at crosswords,” he said honestly, though he failed to add that Ruskin was doing yesterday’s puzzle, which Sirius and Remus had solved together over breakfast the day before.

Ruskin’s confusion seemed to deepen. “That means I got six down wrong though, and I was sure it was Camembert…” He bent back over the newspaper as if physical proximity would help impart some new insight.

“Tell you what, mate,” Sirius offered, trying to sound friendly. “You let me go to the bathroom, and I’ll help you figure out six down”—which was actually Roquefort—“and any other clue that’s giving you trouble.”

The uncertainty on Ruskin’s face hardened into irritation. “You must think I’m pretty stupid,” he sneered.

“No,” Sirius replied testily. “What I _do_ think though, is that I _really_ don’t fancy pissing my trousers, but that’s what’s going to happen if you don’t let me use a loo soon.”

Ruskin wrinkled his nose in disgust, but continued to stare down at his half-finished crossword puzzle. He stayed that way for several minutes, his quill hovering above the paper but never quite touching down to fill in any answers.

Finally, when Sirius had just about given up on it working, Ruskin straightened and advanced on him wand first.

“All right, just to the bathroom and back, and if you try anything I’ll give you worse than a stinging jinx,” he warned.

“Whatever you say,” Sirius agreed, probably letting more sarcasm seep into his tone than was wise. It didn’t matter. All he needed was a few seconds…Ruskin would never expect to be charged by an enormous black dog where a man had just stood. The surprise should last long enough for Padfoot to take a nice big bite out of the pudgy wizard’s wand arm. By the time Ruskin recovered or Knaggs could get to the sitting room, Sirius could easily have his wand in hand.

Ruskin made a slicing gesture with his wand, and the ropes binding Sirius to the chair fell apart. 

An instant later Sirius’s plan fell apart as well as he tried to stand and promptly, gracelessly fell out of the chair and hit the ground in a heap. Needles stabbed through his limbs as blood rushed back to his nerveless hands and feet. Muscles that had been contorted and held in unnatural positions for hours spasmed at their sudden release and protested any further movement. 

“Fuck,” Sirius swore quietly, rubbing at the raw skin of his wrists and trying to make his fingers flex properly. He couldn’t change into his Animagus form, not like this. Not yet at least. On the way back, Sirius promised himself, giving the table a covert glance. His things were still spread across it, his wand half hidden beneath Ruskin’s newspaper.

Still pointing his wand straight at Sirius, Ruskin tapped his foot impatiently. “Get up already,” he growled.

Sirius put a hand down on the floor to steady himself and yelped as something sharp cut his palm. He pulled his hand back, feeling blood running across his skin. On the floor, metal glinted red with his blood and yellow with candlelight. It was a piece of the silver backing from his two-way mirror, tossed all the way from the table when Ruskin had blown it to bits. The fragment was small and twisted, but its jagged edges were painfully sharp.

“What’s that?” Ruskin asked, crooking his head to see. 

_CRACK!_

A loud noise that sounded like it had come from somewhere just outside made Ruskin and Sirius both jump. Ruskin’s eyes went round with alarm and he looked toward the door. Sirius used the moment to the jagged shard of silver. He closed his hand around it and climbed to his feet, using the chair for balance.

The movement drew Ruskin’s attention back to him and the wizard whirled, his wand aimed directly at Sirius’s chest again. 

“Get back in the chair!” Ruskin snapped.

“Hey,” Sirius protested. “I thought—”

_“Impedimenta!”_ Ruskin snarled with enough force that the turquoise light of the jinx hit Sirius hard enough to knock him back into the chair, which nearly toppled over before Ruskin caught the edge of it with his free hand. Before Sirius could recover enough to move, thin ropes shot from the end of Ruskin’s wand and bound his wrists and ankles to the chair again.

Without another word, Ruskin shoved his wand into his pocket and hurried out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him. 

Sirius felt his heart leap. Something was happening, something that frightened Ruskin. That was either very good for him, or very bad for all of them. Either way, he was not about to lose this time away from Ruskin’s droopy-eyed gaze. 

The ropes holding his wrists to the slats behind the chair were tight, allowing for very little movement, but working slowly and carefully, Sirius managed to maneuver the jagged piece of silver until its sharp edge was pressed against the rope. 

He listened with half an ear as Knaggs’s deep voice joined Ruskin out in the hall, but most of Sirius’s attention was on his improvised little knife as he sawed frantically at his bindings. It would be slow going, he realized quickly. The fragment was sharp, but it bent easily if he pressed it the wrong way, and its edges did not discriminate between the ropes and his fingers, slicing his skin open when he wasn’t careful. 

Something rattled outside the sitting room, followed by several clicks and the groan of wood. Knaggs said something Sirius couldn’t quite make out, but he was answered by a new voice.

Sirius froze, the sharp edge of the silver shard digging into his fingertips. It felt like a ball of ice had dropped into his stomach.

He _knew_ that voice. 

It wasn't one he'd heard in a few years, but that was instantly recognizable all the same. Sirius had spent seven years listening to that nasal wheeze in classes and corridors. He’d heard that voice jeer as it tormented Muggle-borns and screech when it fell victim to the Marauders’ pranks.

Ruskin said something and the familiar voice replied in a condescending tone. Then floorboards creaked and three sets of footsteps headed in his direction.

“Shite,” Sirius hissed. The footsteps and voices were getting closer, and unless his bad luck turned around in the next few seconds his lies were all about to be uncovered. He managed to shove the mirror fragment into the back pocket of his jeans. He ducked his head down, letting his hair fall forward and hid his face. 

“Says he's with the Pest Sub-Division,” Ruskin said from right outside the door. “Looking into some Bundimun infestations.”

“And you believe him?” The familiar voice scoffed. The sitting room door squealed as it was pushed open. From between long, matted locks of hair Sirius could see three pairs of legs, one wearing Ruskin’s long grey robes, the second Knaggs’s heavy boots, and the third ending in a pair of polished black shoes with ridiculously pointy toes. They drew close and stopped in front of him. Sirius kept his head down and stayed as still as possible.

“We have noticed a few of the little buggers around lately,” Ruskin replied sullenly.

“I suppose it won't matter in the end, but let's see what you've found.” 

Sirius couldn’t stop a small gasp of pain from escaping as thick fingers grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head sharply back. His neck wrenched at an awkward angle, Sirius glared up at the very surprised face of Marcus Wilkes, one of his least favorite classmates from Hogwarts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and I would be ever so grateful if you'd leave kudos if your enjoying things, and a review no matter what your thoughts.


	5. At the Bottom of Teacups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Lily’s search for Sirius proves to be frustrating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know if I’m satisfied with the last part of this chapter, but I felt compelled to get it posted today. Happy 20th anniversary to all things Harry Potter!

Lily found a teacup sitting on the bedroom windowsill. It was empty and the porcelain was cold to the touch. She picked it up anyway and stared at the tea leaves stuck to the bottom of the cup. For the first time in her life, Lily wished she’d taken Divination at school. James and Peter had taken the class, but they’d napped through most of the lessons, faked their way through the homework, and both gotten Dreadfuls on their O.W.L.s. Lily and Remus had both scoffed at the subject from the start and signed up for Arithmancy instead.

It had been Sirius, to everyone’s surprise, who had taken a genuine interest in divination. He’d kept up with the class even after James and Peter had dropped it and eventually came away with an Outstanding on his N.E.W.T. Once, while drunk and trying to read Lily’s fortune in the dregs at the bottom of her wine glass, Sirius had explained to Lily that he enjoyed the messy, imprecise nature of divination. He never expected to find the answers to all his questions or discover a straight path through the future.

_“I like the idea behind it all,”_ Sirius had slurred. _“That there’s something more, some sort of plan or rhythm…or_ whatever _…to everything out there. I’m not a seer, I’m never going to speak prophesies or discover great truths…but sometimes I can see hints of it in the movements of the stars and planets or the dregs at the bottom of a cup of tea…”_

It was the closest Lily had ever heard Sirius come to religion or poetry

Staring down into the teacup she held now, Lily wondered if there were any signs or warnings hidden within the patterns of dried leaves. Were there clues she and James hadn’t been able to find anywhere else in the flat? And if there were, why hadn’t Sirius seen them?

Lily wracked her brain, trying to decipher the nebulous shapes she could almost see in the tea dregs. She raised the cup to her nose and sniffed, taking in the faint odor or bergamot. It was Earl Grey…Remus’s tea then. After moving in with James and his parents, Sirius had picked up a preference for Indian tea blends.

Lily was still gazing into the teacup, searching the clumps of dried leaves for meaning when James walked into the bedroom.

“What’s that?” he asked, eyes on the teacup, a small flicker of hope in their hazel depths.

“It’s nothing,” Lily said sadly, “Just an empty teacup.”

Still holding the cup, she walked out of the bedroom and headed back toward the kitchen. There were other dishes cluttering the sink, plates and butter knives still smeared with jam and toast crumbs from breakfast. Lily set the teacup down among them.

“We should go,” Lily said, still staring down into the sink. She had the strange impulse to stop and wash everything, just so she could feel like she’d accomplished something by coming here. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw James nod mechanically from the kitchen doorway.

“James?” Lily said, worry in her voice. He was not handling things well. Ever since Marlene’s Floo-call he’d quickly swung between manic anxiety and shocked listlessness. It had only been a few months since James had lost both of his parents. He was only just getting over the grief of their deaths, and Lily didn’t know what it would do to him if something had happened to Sirius.

“Right,” James said, nodding again. He looked away from her, back out into the main room.

The entire flat had been a bust. They’d both known it would be from the moment James had unlocked the front door and stepped inside. The protective enchantments had all been in place along the doors and windows. Lily and James had searched every room methodically, but they’d found no signs of trouble and nothing to suggest Sirius had intended to be gone for longer than the few hours his mission was supposed to last.

“Right,” James repeated, nodding again. “You’re right. He’s not here, no one’s been here since morning…we should go.” 

Lily crossed to her husband’s side and took his hand in hers. His thumb instantly began to rub small circles across her palm. James needed to do something, she knew. He wasn’t the sort who could sit still and wait for things to happen; he couldn’t be alone with nothing but his thoughts and worries.

“We’ll Apparate to headquarters and see what everyone else has found out,” Lily said. “Moody or Dumbledore will know what to do next.” 

James nodded along with everything she said. However, when Lily started to lead him toward the front door, he balked.

“Wait, just…” He pulled away from her and hurried back into the bedroom. When Lily caught up to him, James was rummaging around the writing desk Remus had shoved into a corner and all but buried in books. She drifted over to watch as he managed to find a sheet of blank parchment. Grabbing a Muggle pen from a chipped mug full of quills, pens, and pencils, James scribbled out a brief note in bold letters.

_Padfoot,_

_IF YOU’RE READING THIS, CONTACT ME RIGHT NOW!  
—Prongs   
_  
When he was done writing, James cast a doubling spell on the parchment, then cast it again for good measure. One of the notes he left on Sirius’s pillow, the next he set on the kitchen table, and the third he fixed to the bathroom mirror with a sticking charm.

_Just in case_ …Lily thought. Just in case Sirius came home, in case he really had forgotten to check in at headquarters after completing his mission. If that were the case, they would both be furious with him. Yet, Lily would prefer the hot flash of anger to the sickening churn of fear she now felt in her gut, and she was sure James felt the same way.

Lily waited patiently near the doorway until James was finished. When he returned to her side, Lily took his hand again and they walked out of the flat, locking the door and resetting the protection charms behind them. Holding tight to her husband, Lily turned on her heel, and they vanished together.

*

Less than an hour later, Lily stared into another teacup and tried to block out the sound of grown men screaming at each other. This cup was still half full, and, seeing as the contents were almost equal parts tea and brandy, she doubted even a true seer would find anything but a hangover at the bottom of it.

She took another sip and winced as something shattered. Looking up, Lily saw a wet splatter on the faded yellow paint of the kitchen wall. Firewhisky was running down the wainscoting to puddle among the shards of a broken bottle. James was going to regret throwing that, she thought to herself. Not right now though, because her husband was still in the middle of a vicious row with Alastor Moody. 

This was what happened when James wasn’t allowed to move, to act. He lashed out, caused as much trouble as he could manage. Sometimes she thought that was half the reason Dumbledore and McGonagall had made him Head Boy, to keep him busy enough he would stay out of trouble. Neither she or James had any sort of authority within the Order of the Phoenix though. They were grunts, soldiers, meant to follow orders from the likes of Moody. However, James’s willingness to follow orders and obey authority figures had always been tenuous at best, and he was far from his best tonight.

Peter stood half a step behind James, backing him up, even though the short, pudgy young man winced every time Moody snapped at them. Marlene and Sturgis were both in the house as well, but they’d wisely chosen to stay out of the kitchen after James and Moody had started yelling. Sturgis was by the fireplace, waiting in case anyone called, while Marlene was hiding in the front room, watching for the Prewetts, who were supposed to come over after they checked a few of Sirius’s regular pubs, just in case.

Lily closed her eyes and rested her elbows on the long kitchen table before leaning forward to rub at her temples where a headache was beginning to form. It had been a long and terrible day for the most part, and even though the sun was setting out across the unkempt fields, it was far from over.

The words James and Moody were shouting—with the occasional addition from Peter—went in one ear and out the other without Lily paying much attention. They’d already argued the same points at least twice, circling back through over and over because James and Moody were both too stubborn to give in.

James and Lily had arrived at the Order of the Phoenix’s headquarters to find there had been no word from Sirius. Peter and Moody had both beat them there, and Minerva McGonagall’s Patronus had appeared shortly after them. The silver tabby cat had come bearing more bad news. Dumbledore was stuck in a closed-door meeting with the Minister, and McGonagall didn’t expect him to get out until after midnight at the earliest, and she assumed dawn was more likely.

The fighting had started after that.

James had insisted they couldn’t wait for Dumbledore. He wanted to follow Sirius’s footsteps right away. Moody had urged caution, and he was urging it again in very blunt terms, standing inches away from James and jabbing a finger at James’s chest.

“No one is running off half-cocked into a situation we know far too little about! You’re not an Auror, Potter!” Moody shouted.

“Yeah, ‘cause your Aurors are doing such a bang-up job, aren’t they, Alastor?” James snapped in return. “That’s why you’re in the Order, isn’t it? So you can actually get things done instead of sitting on your wrinkled old arse while politicians wank around!”

As experienced as he was, Lily had the sinking feeling that Moody was out of his depth too. He was used to having the weight of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement behind him, not sneaking around in the dark, hiding his actions from the Ministry almost as much as he was trying to hide them from Voldemort. This was the first time one of their own had gone missing in action, and Moody couldn’t send in a brigade of Aurors with badges and warrants backed by Obliviators, Hit Wizards, and all the other resources he could call upon in his official position. 

The Order was a secret though, and up to this point that had worked in their favor. Disappearances and deaths had become a tragic but increasingly common occurrence throughout both the Wizarding and Muggle communities. However, Dumbledore had managed to keep the Order of the Phoenix a secret from both the Ministry and the Death Eaters, and its members had remained relatively unscathed thus far. There had been a few injuries on missions, and one of Benjy Fenwick’s cousins had vanished from her own house, but they been extremely luck overall.

Only now that luck seemed to have finally run out. 

It was horrible, Lily knew, and she hated herself for thinking it, but she wished it were someone else missing, someone who wasn’t so close to her heart. 

During her first five years at Hogwarts, Lily hadn’t cared much for Sirius. She’d thought he was little more than a bully and a buffoon, James Potter’s irritating right hand. Then, during a truly unexpected weekend the summer between their fifth and sixth years, Lily had actually spent time with Sirius, actually talked to him, and she’d found a great deal of common ground with the boy she’d previously despised. From there he’d grown into one of her closest friends, until he was almost as much of a brother to her as he was to James.

James slammed a fist against the table, shaking it hard enough for some of Lily’s tea and brandy to slosh out onto a map of London. She picked up the cup and drained it in one long, scalding gulp. 

“No!” James shouted. “My best friend is missing! I will not stay here twiddling my damned thumbs while he could be hurt! He could be—”

He cut himself off, choking on the words he’d almost said, the possibility he’d almost acknowledged. Still, the unspoken words seemed to echo through the kitchen until they faded into a taut, frozen silence. 

Lily set her empty cup down on the damp map of London. There were little red marks on the map over places they suspected Death Eaters were meeting. A drop of tea had landed on one red X and the ink was starting to run. It looked almost like blood. Lily dabbed at it with the sleeve of her blouse and knew she couldn’t sit and do nothing any more than James could. 

“James has an invisibility cloak.” 

Every head in the room turned to gawp at Lily in shock. Peter squeaked in shock, and Moody raised a startled eyebrow, but Lily barely glanced at them. James looked at her with a hint of betrayal in his eyes. His cloak, like his status as an unregistered Animagus, was a closely held secret. He had entrusted Lily with both only when he was so sure about their relationship he was ready to buy her a ring.

Lily met his eyes, apologetic but resolved. “More than likely he’s got it shoved in a pocket,” Lily continued, the abashed expression on James’s face told her she was right. He almost never left home without the cloak hidden somewhere on him these days. 

Glancing away from James, Lily caught the thoughtful look on Moody’s face and knew she could win this. Moody had an invisibility cloak—two in fact—but one technically belonged to the Auror Office and the other was being used by Dorcas Meadowes on a stakeout over in Glasgow at the moment. 

“The cloak’s big enough for two, if the second person is smaller,” Lily said. “Send James and Peter to trace Sirius’s footsteps. They won’t be seen, and they can gather information so we can form an actual plan.”

Moody’s heavy brows rose higher across his forehead, and he gave Lily an appraising look. She met his gaze, feeling hollow but heavy as a stone as a plan spun out in her head. 

“Clever wife you’ve got there, Potter,” Moody said gruffly. He turned to James, who’s expression had softened as he realized what Lily was doing. “Well, is it true? Do you have an invisibility cloak on you?” 

James reached into his back pocket and pulled out far more fabric than should have been able to fit in his jeans. He shook out the shimmering cloak and then wrapped it around himself. His body vanished, leaving his head floating in midair and glaring mulishly at Moody.

When James’s body reappeared, Moody stepped forward and ran his fingers over the cloth. He gave a grunt and a small nod. “Good quality there,” he said. He squinted up at James. “Do you think you can do a bit of reconnaissance without resorting to stupid heroics, Potter?”

Before James opened his mouth to reply, Lily spoke. “He wouldn’t dare do anything stupid, not without me there beside him.” 

Lily locked eyes with her husband and he nodded. They were in this and everything else together now. They’d promised as much on their wedding day. Together, forever. 

“Yes,” James said in answer to Moody’s spoken question and Lily’s unspoken one.

The plan came together quickly after that. Now that he had something to do, James was much more willing to listen to Moody’s instructions. Peter looked rather queasy at the idea of accompanying his friend into unknown danger, but he swallowed and nodded along with James. 

They were to Apparate beneath the cloak to a spot not far from where Sirius himself had arrived, look for any signs of their friend, or anything suspicious, and report back in an hour. Not a minute longer, and if they found anything at all, they were to immediately report back, either with a Patronus or in person. Under no circumstances were they to do anything Moody described as “Gryffindor-brand stupidity.” 

“I’m sorry I told Moody about your cloak,” Lily said. She and James had gone out into the back garden to say goodbye away from prying eyes. 

James leaned in to give her a quick kiss. “Don’t be,” James said. “Moody’s right, I have a very clever wife.” He rested his forehead against hers, his glasses bumping her nose. “Thank you, I needed to do this…”

“I know,” Lily replied. “You made me a promise though, so don’t forget it. You don’t do anything stupid without me, not anymore.”

It was dark enough she couldn’t see him grin, but she knew he was, and she knew exactly how his face would look. She’d memorized him, every single inch. 

“One hour and you come back to me, James Potter,” Lily whispered.

“One hour, I promise, Lily Potter,” he replied.

One last kiss and he stepped away from her. Lily remained standing in the middle of the weedy garden as James trotted down to join Peter by the duck pond. The two of them moved close together, Peter taking hold of James’s arm as James swept the cloak over the both of them. They vanished a moment before Lily heard the soft crack of their Disapparation. 

She stayed there for another long minute, watching the last of the color drain from the sky as night descended. Lily was not one to stand around pining for her husband’s return. Walking back into the kitchen, she found Sturgis had dared to return to the kitchen and he was bent over a set of maps with Moody.

Lily walked past them to the ancient hob and the kettle. She poured herself half a cup of water, grabbed a tea bag, and filled the rest of the cup with more brandy. 

“Right then,” she said as she sat back down at the table across from Sturgis. “Give me something to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to anyone and everyone who reads, leaves kudos, bookmarks this work, and especially to those lovely souls who write reviews.


	6. The Fine Art of Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius made himself a promise, and he’s prepared to do anything to keep it.

During their sixth year at Hogwarts, James had performed a flashy bit of transfiguration on Marcus Wilkes that had involved turning his head into that of a flounder. Sirius, James, Peter, and even Remus had all had a grand laugh at it, particularly when the Slytherin had to dive into the lake to breathe with his newly acquired gills. When Professor McGonagall had confronted them about the prank, James had shrugged and serenely told McGonagall that _“I honestly didn’t think anyone would notice the difference.”_

The Wilkeses always did have a rather piscine look about them. It was something in the underbites and the pale, protuberant eyes, Sirius suspected. 

Those fish-like qualities became especially pronounced as Marcus Wilkes gawped down at Sirius now. Wilkes’s mouth opened and closed several times without making any noise at all. Then his round, bulging eyes narrowed and a delighted smirk spread across his narrow, bony face. Wilkes kept his hand knotted in Sirius’s hair as he threw a glance over his shoulder at Knaggs and Ruskin.

“What did he tell you his name was?” Wilkes asked. He sounded almost giddy. 

Sirius could count the number of times he’d agreed with his mother’s opinions on one hand without having to use his thumb. However, her assessment of the Wilkes family had always struck him as bitingly precise. _“Dim, avaricious social climbers with ill-informed delusions of dignity, let alone grandeur,”_ Walburga Black had once said of Wilkes’s parents, and the Bowtruckle hadn’t wandered far from the tree where Marcus was concerned. 

He seemed to have made a better impression on Ruskin and Knaggs though. They both looked half frightened and half in awe of Wilkes, who was shorter than Ruskin and a good decade younger than either of them. It made Sirius want to scoff. He’d always found Wilkes to be the least impressive member of the little gang of Slytherins he’d run around with at Hogwarts. Wilkes had never been able to match Mulciber’s brutality, Avery’s guile, or Snape’s cruel cleverness, though he’d tried to ape all of them at one point or another.

“Er, Bond…John Bond…I think, sir,” Ruskin said.

“Jacob,” Knaggs corrected wrongly.

Wilkes’s smirk widened into a snaggletoothed grin. “Well, he lied” he said smugly. “This one’s not a Bond, he’s a _Black_.”

Wilkes shifted to tighten his grip on Sirius’s hair, and suddenly Ruskin and Knaggs’s groveling made all too much sense. The left sleeve of Wilkes’s robe had been rolled up above his elbow, proudly displaying a skull and snake set in black against his pallid skin.

Sirius swallowed. 

_Well, fuck…_

He wasn’t the least bit surprised to learn Wilkes supported Voldemort, if anything he was amazed Voldemort had found Wilkes impressive enough to give him the Dark Mark. Still, this was not good for him, Sirius knew. 

In fact, he knew far, far too much. He knew things Voldemort and his Death Eaters would kill to learn.

Sirius was suddenly glad he didn’t know where Remus was or what Dumbledore had him doing. There were other things he did know though. He knew about the Order of the Phoenix, knew the names of its members and where many of them lived. He knew the location of their headquarters, knew their methods, their resources, and many of their objectives. He knew where Peter’s mum lived, knew how to get through the protection spells at James and Lily’s house.

Ruskin, always the smarter of the pair, even if that wasn’t much of a competition, went pale. “A Black—as in _the_ Blacks?”

_Damn_ , Sirius couldn't help but think. If he'd known his family name would have that effect he'd have thrown it at Ruskin and Knaggs in the beginning and walked out of their shabby little safe house with his wand in hand and a heartfelt apology for his inconvenience. Hindsight was no help to him now though, because Wilkes’s smile grew almost impossibly wide.

“Oh yes, but don’t worry,” Wilkes said. He gave Sirius’s hair another yank, pulling his head back even further. “The ‘Noble and Moste Ancient House of Black’ doesn’t give a damn about this one. Disowned at—what was it—fifteen, eh, Sirius?”

His cover story was blown and he was tied to a chair without his wand, being sneered at by a Death Eater with a short temper and a schoolboy grudge. He had a plan for this sort of situation, but it was a horrible plan.

_In for a Knut, in for a Galleon_ , Sirius thought darkly.

He forced his pained grimace into a smile. “Sixteen actually,” he said brightly. “And I celebrate the day each year like a second birthday—buy myself a cake and everything. How have you been, Marcus? Life after Hogwarts treating you well?”

“Oh, I can’t complain,” Wilkes drawled. “At least I’m not chasing pests for the Ministry.” 

Sirius shrugged as best he could. “Alas, without the Black family fortune I’ve been reduced to laboring for a living. Still, it’s fascinating work,” he said pleasantly, as if they really were two old school friends catching up after a few years apart. “Of course, the smell can get bad at times—Bundimuns and all that—I imagine it can’t be worse than what you have to put up with though, spending your days kissing Bellatrix’s and Malfoy’s arses.”

Wilkes never could stand to be mocked. He flushed with anger, which turned his naturally ashen skin an ugly pink-grey color reminiscent of an earthworm. With a snarl, Wilkes let go of Sirius’s hair only to draw back a fist and hit him in the face.

It didn’t take much to start Sirius’s already broken nose bleeding again. He spit a mouthful of blood out as it ran down his lips and chin, barely missing the pointy tips of Wilkes’s shoes. 

“Really, Marcus,” Sirius slipped into a bored, posh voice that put Wilkes’s faux-aristocratic inflections to shame. “You leave that sort of thing to the hired help—” He rolled his eyes in Knaggs’s direction. The big, brutish wizard looked like he didn’t know whether he should be flattered or insulted. “—your delicate hands are a little too soft to be very effective.” Indeed, Wilkes was shaking and flexing his fingers like the blow had hurt him almost as much as it had hurt Sirius.

Wilkes’s complexion edged toward a deep puce, but he curled his thin lips into a sneer. This time, he didn’t waste either of their time throwing punches. A quick jerk of Wilkes’s wand, and Sirius swore loudly as a bone snapped in his right index finger. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel the digit twist suddenly in an unnatural angle as pain radiated out from it. 

“Nine more fingers, Black,” Wilkes sounded eager even through his anger. “Apologize nicely and maybe I won’t break them all.”

“Fine,” Sirius hissed. “I’m sorry about that time I tricked you into sending nude photographs to Professor Sprout, that poor woman did not deserve—”

He shouted and cursed again, eyes clenched tightly shut as another finger snapped. Over his shoulder Sirius heard someone—Knaggs he reckoned—turn a laugh into a choking cough Sirius was almost certain was at Wilkes’s expense.

Conventional wisdom would have told Sirius to shut his mouth at that point, because Wilkes seemed more than willing to follow through on his threat to break every single one of Sirius’s fingers. He’d still held out some hope of being able to talk his way out of trouble with Ruskin and Knaggs, or at escape given the opportunity. He had no such delusions about Wilkes though. Wilkes knew him too well. 

However, there were ways Sirius could make that familiarity work in his favor. He knew as much about Wilkes as Wilkes knew about him, and from the moment he’d seen the Dark Mark on Wilkes’s arm, Sirius had known exactly what he needed to do. To start, he had to make Wilkes lose his notoriously short temper.

Luckily, there was an art to making people angry, and Sirius had studied it from a young age. His parents had each expressed their displeasure in wildly different ways. Walburga Black had been quick-tempered, violent, and erratic when angered. Sirius could never predict what his mother would do when she lost her temper; it was always painful, but he could usually count on it being over quickly. On the other hand, his father’s wrath had been slow and inevitable as a glacier. To a tee, his “disciplines” had been calculated, exacting, and tailored to fit Sirius’s transgressions in the most excruciating ways possible. 

When given the option, Sirius had always chosen his mother’s wrath over his father’s.

Sirius had a good measure of Wilkes’s style of anger too. He’d seen enough of it at school to know that Wilkes fell on Walburga’s end of the spectrum. If Sirius could antagonize him enough, Wilkes would lose all common sense and restraint when he lost his temper. 

That was good, because Sirius had to make Wilkes not just angry, but frothing at the mouth furious. He had to make Wilkes _want_ to hurt him. 

He had to do it, because the alternatives were much, much worse.

“Not what you meant?” Sirius asked from between clenched teeth. “If you’re looking for an apology for the flounder head thing, that wasn’t actually me.”

The third finger to break was on Sirius’s left hand, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from howling. 

“… I do take full responsibility for the incident with the Fungiface Potion though…” Sirius said. The words felt slow and clumsy on his bitten tongue. “…wasn’t personal though…you just happened to drink from the wrong flagon of pumpkin juice…”

He’d braced himself for the snap of another bone, but it didn’t come. Instead, Wilkes grabbed him by the hair again and dragged his head up hard enough to strain the muscles in Sirius’s neck. For a moment Sirius was worried he’d lost him, that maybe Wilkes wasn’t as easy to goad as he used to be. Then he caught sight of the bug-eyed murder written across Wilkes’s face and laughed.

“You’re not half as clever as you think you are, Black!” Wilkes sputtered with rage.

Sirius bared his teeth in a bloody, feral grin but answered in the same genteel, condescending tone. “Which still makes me five times cleverer than you.”

Wilkes let go of his hair but didn’t step back, and his wand nearly caught Sirius in the eye as he whipped it upward. There was no hesitation, nothing but brittle fury in Wilkes’s voice as he roared the curse Sirius knew they would eventually come to.

_“CRUCIO!”_

Sirius screamed, and the world went white with pain.

*

_“I’m afraid,” Remus whispered._

_The last candle had burned out and the bedroom was dark enough that, even lying pressed against him, Sirius could barely make out Remus’s profile, let alone his expression. Sirius moved so his head was pillowed on Remus’s bare chest. He could feel the rise and fall of Remus’s breath beneath his cheek, hear his steady heartbeat._

_It was several silent minutes before Sirius whispered, “me too” into the darkness._

_They’d been to their very first meeting that night, sat beside James, Lily, Peter, and several other new recruits, and listened for well over an hour as some old Auror had lectured them on all the horrible things that might happen to them if they agreed to join Dumbledore’s secret society and fight Voldemort._  
  
_“It’s not dying I’m afraid of though.” Sirius said the words so quietly he almost hoped Remus wouldn’t hear them._

_“I’m afraid of you dying,” Remus answered. One of his arms wrapped around Sirius’s waist and tugged him closer._

_“And I’m afraid of you dying…and James, and Peter, and Lily…” Sirius said. “And I suppose…I suppose I am afraid of dying too, but it’s not what scares me the most…”_

_The hand that wasn’t resting on Sirius’s hip moved to his long black hair and began stroking lightly. Remus did the same thing when petting Sirius in his Animagus form. It should have been ridiculous, but instead it felt soothing._

_They’d come home from that meeting and fucked until they were both too exhausted to move. It had been rough, desperate; a way to reassure themselves that they were alive…alive and together. It hadn’t been enough though, not to quiet the dread that had crept into both of their minds._

_“I’m afraid I’ll hurt you,” Sirius confessed._

_The fingers along Sirius’s scalp stopped moving._

_“What are you talking about?” Remus sounded genuinely confused._

_“I’m not afraid of dying, not really,” Sirius said, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see even the dark outline of Remus against the sheets. “I’m afraid of the other things Moody warned us about…I’m afraid of being caught, of telling secrets…I’m afraid of being the reason you might get hurt, of being the reason you might die.”_

_“Oh, Sirius…” Remus’s voice was full of gentle exasperation._

_“Don’t,” Sirius said sharply. “Don’t tell me that won’t happen. Not when I’ve already done it once.”_

_Remus was silent. He didn’t push Sirius away, but he became so still only the beat of his heart told Sirius he was still alive. “That was a long time ago, Sirius…and under was very different circumstances,” Remus said finally._

_Remus had forgiven him years ago for the incident with Snape, but Sirius had never truly forgiven himself, and neither of them had ever forgotten it. Suddenly, Sirius couldn’t stand their closeness. He pulled out of Remus’s arms and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so he didn’t have to see Remus at all._

_“That’s what worries me,” Sirius said bitterly. “Snape only had to taunt me, to make a few jokes he didn’t even fully understand, and I panicked and told him exactly how to get to the Shack…You heard that Moody bloke, ‘get caught alive by a Death Eater and you become the greatest threat to the Order and everyone you love.’”_

_“He was just trying to scare us, Sirius, to see who bolted and who stayed,” Remus replied._

_“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Sirius muttered. The room was starting to feel stiflingly hot. He reached for the wand sitting on the bedside cabinet, only realizing it was Remus’s once it was in his hand. The wand still responded well enough to unlatch the window and pull it open when Sirius whispered a spell. The curtains billowed in a breeze, and the rush of cold air helped Sirius breathe._

_The bed dipped and springs groaned as Remus moved. Sirius was not surprised when familiar arms wrapped around him again. Remus pressed a kiss to the side of his neck before resting his chin on Sirius’s shoulder and just held him. He didn’t say anything, but Sirius leaned into his touch._

_“You know Snape’s probably one of them, by now,” Sirius muttered._

_“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Remus said. “Honestly, I imagine there are quite a few familiar faces hiding beneath those awful hoods.”_

_“More for me than most,” Sirius said bitterly. He’d sat across the dinner table from people he was certain were now Death Eaters; hell, he shared blood with several of them. Bellatrix and her in-laws had been among the first to take the mark, as had Narcissa’s husband, and by now maybe even Regulus was sporting a skull and serpent along the inside of his arm…_

_What would he do if forced to fight his cousin or his brother? He didn’t know, and—it felt cowardly to admit it even to himself—but he was terrified of what they might do to him if given the chance. That was the root of his greatest fear. Snape had been clever enough to find the right buttons to push, and Snape had nothing on Bellatrix…on Regulus. After all, no one knew quite how to hurt you like family. Sirius believed that without a doubt. He’d barely gotten away from them once, and he couldn’t imagine he’d be lucky enough to manage it a second time._

_“We could still leave,” Remus said pragmatically. “Grab Lily, James, and Peter and run off to some distant corner of the world and never look back.”_

_“No,” Sirius replied. “I couldn’t leave.” Despite his fears—and how pleasant the image of Remus lying naked on a tropical beach might be—he knew he couldn’t do that. Sirius didn’t have it in him to run from this fight._

_“I couldn’t either,” Remus agreed, ironclad resolution in his voice. “But I think it’s important that we both said it out loud. Now we know we’re in this together.”_

_“Together,” Sirius echoed him. He interlaced his fingers with Remus’s and raised their hands to kiss Remus’s scarred knuckles. When Remus pulled him back into bed, Sirius went willingly and spent the last of his nervous energy making Remus scream his name._

_However, as Remus finally fell asleep in his arms, Sirius lay awake and held him close, promising silently that he would die before he ever betrayed Remus or any of his friends ever again._

__*

The white haze of pain and memory gave way quickly as Wilkes muttered _“Aguamenti”_ and a jet of frigid water hit Sirius in the face. Sputtering and dripping, he licked at his cracked lips, trying to catch enough water to ease the burning in his throat or wash the taste of blood from his mouth.

_This is part of the plan,_ he reminded himself. And the plan was working. Wilkes hadn’t asked him so much as a single real question, hadn’t realized he should probably alert someone higher up the ranks that Sirius Black had been caught snooping around a Death Eater safe house. No, Wilkes hadn’t focused on anything other than getting vengeance for all the pranks and petty bullying Sirius had put him through at school. 

Sirius closed his eyes and tried to focus on breathing. Still caught in the aftershocks of the Cruciatus Curse, he could barely even feel his broken ribs. He’d hoped it would take longer for Wilkes to work his way up to the torture curse. He was still holding out some hope that the Order was looking for him, that they might find him soon, or even that he might get another chance to saw through the ropes. 

Then again, Wilkes had never had much patience. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d been hit with the Cruciatus Curse. His mother had used it on him when he was sixteen years old. It had only been for a second or two at most, and she’d looked surprised, even a little frightened, when she’d realized what she’d done. 

As if through a tunnel, Sirius could hear the distant sound of laughter. 

Wilkes knew precisely what he was doing, and he was enjoying it. 

The lessons of Sirius’s childhood were still applicable though. Sirius would take a vicious idiot like Wilkes over any of the clever, creative Death Eaters he knew Voldemort had under his command. Brutal and swift. That had always been Walburga’s style, and it was Wilkes’s too. Sirius had always been able to handle his mother; he could handle Wilkes just the same. 

Wilkes slapped him across the cheek.

“You’re not spent already, are you, Black?” Wilkes said, his smiling, fish-like face swam before Sirius’s unfocused eyes. “We’ve barely even started.”  
 _  
It’s just pain,_ Sirius tried to tell himself. He could deal with the pain and with Wilkes. 

The muscles of his face felt like they were made of heavy clay, but Sirius forced himself to grin in return and let out a hoarse laugh. “My mum…curses harder than you do…”

There was no way to prepare for that sort of pain; no way for Sirius to brace himself as Wilkes raised his wand again, but he kept laughing right until he screamed again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like a little more on how I'm writing the whole prank/whomping willow/Snape incident that did get mentioned in this chapter, I did post the prologue for another story that will be delving into that as well as Sirius running away from home. It's mostly a Sirius & Lily friendship fic, but it is in the same continuity as this story, and may provide some additional insight into things happening here. It's in no way required to read one to understand the other, but if you're interested, that story is called The Dog You Feed.


	7. The Taste of Salt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wilkes delivers some disturbing news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a while. I had a touch of writer's block, and I was also distracted by writing a few chapters of _The Dog You Feed_ (and plotting a couple of future fics as well). Hope you enjoy!

_  
There was sand beneath his feet, all four of them. It sprayed up as he ran along the edge of the water chasing gulls. The sea birds took flight long before he could get near them, crying loud complaints as they took to the air. He barked at their retreating backs, his tail wagging wildly. When the small beach was bird free, he turned and proudly raced back through the surf toward a tall man in an oversized jumper, who was watching him with a smile._

_“Padfoot—no! Dammit!” Remus yelled as the enormous, shaggy black dog reared up on his hind legs, planting his sandy forepaws on Remus’s shoulders, claws catching in the weave of Remus’s fraying wool jumper. Padfoot’s long tongue licked Remus’s cheek, tasting briny salt on the man’s skin._

_“Stop it, you great mutt!” Remus said, shoving at the dog’s chest. There was amusement at the edge of his admonitions though. It stirred distinctly un-doglike feelings in Padfoot, and he suddenly wanted to be something other than a dog._

_An instant later, Remus’s palms were braced against a very human chest covered in a sopping wet t-shirt. Human fingers slid off Remus’s shoulders and circled around the back of his neck, tangling in short curls damp from the sea air. Sirius pressed his very human mouth against Remus’s lips, still tasting salt._

_“Sirius, stop! You’re still wet!” Remus protested, pulling away from the kiss but not out of his boyfriend’s arms. He was chuckling despite his complaints._

_“Get naked and come swimming with me,” Sirius entreated, punctuating every word with a light kiss down Remus’s neck._

_Remus kept laughing but shook his head. “There’s no way I’m swimming in the North Sea in the middle of January, and neither are you. You’re already shaking!”_

_That was true enough. Sirius slid his hands beneath the collar of Remus’s jumper, savoring the warmth of Remus’s scarred skin against his fingertips. Without Padfoot’s heavy fur the cold was seeping through his wet clothes and skin. He was shivering head to toe, his wet hair dripping more icy water down his back, and his teeth chattering. Sirius used it as an excuse to press closer to Remus._

_Remus laughed again as he pulled Sirius tight against him, sharing his body heat. “Let’s get you back to the inn and warmed up. I promise I’ll get naked with you beneath an enormous pile of quilts.”_

_“Mmm…that does sound nice,” Sirius replied. He closed his eyes and listened to the roar of the waves and the calls of the returning gulls as Remus began guiding him up the beach, an arm still wrapped around his trembling shoulders. The further they walked the quieter the sounds of the sea became, replaced, inexplicably, by the rough scrape of wood against wood._

_The cold seemed to sink deeper and deeper into Sirius’s bones as a fog rolled in, draining the landscape of color before swallowing it whole, leaving nothing but misty grey._

_“Remus…” he whispered. The warmth at his side and the familiar laughter were gone. Sirius was alone in the cold grey fog, suddenly unable to move except to shiver._

_Soft, yellow light began to emerge from the fog. Pain blossomed in Sirius’s chest as the light drew closer, radiating out through his body with every beat of his heart._

_“Please…Remus…” He called again.  
_  
*

“What was that, Black?” 

A dark blur stepped in front of the light, leaning close. Sirius blinked and squinted, but when Wilkes’s leering, fishlike face came into focus he squeezed his eyes shut again. He wanted to be back on that beach with Remus; he wanted to be anywhere but here.

“What were you saying?” Wilkes asked again.

The cold and the taste of salt had followed Sirius back to the waking world, but the salt on his lips and tongue was nothing more than blood and sweat, and the chill in his trembling limbs was a symptom of blood loss and shock. 

“It sounded like a name,” Wilkes prompted. “Who were you dreaming of, eh?” 

Sirius’s eyes snapped open again, his breath caught in his aching chest. He couldn’t let Wilkes work out whose name he’d been calling. Remus was out there somewhere on his own mission, possibly in danger already. Sirius would not let anything happen to the man he loved, not because of him.

“Your sister,” Sirius whispered. His throat was too raw and dry to do anything but whisper. He wasn’t even sure he could scream anymore. “Even with the lazy eye she always did have great tits—”

Sirius was almost thankful Wilkes’s curse cut him off. He didn’t have the right inclinations to devise more than one or two taunts about Rufina Wilkes’s breasts. Pain shot through Sirius’s stomach. It wasn’t another bout of the Cruciatus Curse, but it still _hurt_. He felt like someone had reached a hand right into his abdomen, grabbed a handful of organs, and violently rearranged them. Sirius doubled over as far as the ropes holding him to the chair would allow, groaning weakly.

The spell itself didn’t last long, but the horrible, sharp sense of _wrongness_ remained in his belly, causing a new stab of agony with every slight movement. Breathing in shallow gasps, Sirius slowly managed to straighten and sag against the back of the chair just as Wilkes took a seat right in front of him. The scraping sound that had broken into Sirius’s dream had come from Wilkes dragging the other chair from the table into the middle of the room near Sirius. 

Smiling smugly, Wilkes leaned back in his chair like it was a throne. He watched with interest as a Sirius coughed up a mouthful of blood. “That’d be the curse,” Wilkes drawled. “Antonin Dolohov taught me that one. It can cause some internal bleeding, but it shouldn’t be enough to kill you.”

Blood dripped down Sirius’s chin and fell in fat drops on the floor in front of him. 

“I thought we could both use a break from the Cruciatus Curse,” Wilkes continued. “My wand arm was getting a little sore, and you…” He made a dramatic show of looking Sirius up and down. “Well, you look like you’re about to keel over, Black. Did you know that’s possible? That people can actually _die_ from the Cruciatus Curse? I’ve seen it happen. It takes a long time though, and they’re always begging for death long before it actually comes.”

Sirius turned his head away in disgust. Wilkes talked about torturing people to death with the same animated passion that James talked about Quidditch. He’d known Wilkes and his little gang of friends were twisted, but this was beyond what Sirius had seen hints of at school. _This_ was a depth of depravity bred and nurtured among the ranks of Voldemort’s chosen followers.

The other chair creaked as Wilkes leaned forward, his bulging eyes fixed on Sirius, a piranha grin on his face. “Does that scare you, Black?” He asked eagerly.

Wilkes almost jumped in surprise as Sirius let out a hoarse bark of laughter. It quickly turned into a wet, hacking cough that brought up more blood, filling Sirius’s mouth with the taste of salt and iron. “Scared of you?” Sirius wheezed. “Never.”

The look on Wilkes’s face soured. “Too much of the Cruciatus Curse can drive people mad as well,” he scoffed. “But you’ve always been a bit cracked, haven’t you, Black?”

“Runs in the family,” Sirius croaked, still chuckling through the dizzying pain. “Both sides of it.” 

“I don’t know about that,” Wilkes said. “Regulus seems to have his priorities straight.”

Sirius froze at the mention of his little brother as Wilkes’s words echoed through his head. 

_“Regulus seems to have his priorities straight.”_

There was no questioning what priorities Wilkes was referring to. Sirius could remember Regulus as he’d been at fifteen, carefully cutting articles on Voldemort out of the _Daily Prophet_ , a glint of admiration in his eyes. Regulus had always listened when their parents spoke of Pureblood supremacy, of their family’s own inherent superiority, listened and nodded along with everything they said.

It wasn’t a surprise to hear that Regulus was still the good son, still the perfect little heir their parents had always wanted. It hurt though, to be reminded that his little brother had the sort of “priorities” scum like Wilkes approved of. In the depths of his heart, Sirius had never stopped hoping that the kindhearted boy he’d once loved more than anyone in the world was still somewhere inside of Regulus.

“What do you think your brother would do if he were here?” Wilkes asked. He wasn’t the brightest, but even he could read the naked anguish on Sirius’s face. “Do you think he’d throw a few curses your way? Do you think he’d hurt you? I do.” The Death Eater drew his wand and pressed the tip of his wand beneath Sirius’s chin, using it to lift the bound man’s head. 

Sirius met Wilke’s gaze with fury burning in his bloodshot grey eyes. Anger was a blanket he’d long thrown over his fear and pain to hide it from sight if not to smother it.

“You don’t know the first thing about my brother,” Sirius hissed. Wilkes was goading him, playing the same game Sirius had been using against him from the start. He couldn’t help himself though. Regulus was still a sore spot, an open, festering wound on Sirius’s heart. 

Wilkes was wrong, Sirius assured himself. Regulus may have aped their parents and bent over backwards to please them. He may have even taken their blood supremacist beliefs to heart, but Regulus had always been soft-hearted, often too much so for his own good. Even when they’d fought, when Regulus had done things that _had_ hurt Sirius, his little brother had always done them with the best of intentions, always trying to _help_. Regulus was the sort of boy who befriended house elves, who always said please and thank you to the owls that delivered his letters, and who used to cry if Sirius smashed a spider. 

For a moment Wilkes stopped short and cocked his head in genuine confusion. Then his protuberant eyes went almost impossibly wide. 

“Oh! You don’t know! _You don’t even know!_ ” Wilkes said, voice full of pompous delight, like he knew a joke Sirius wasn’t in on. 

Despite being bruised, bloody, and bound to a chair, Sirius managed a decent imitation of his father’s condescending glare—it was all in the subtle lift and curl of the upper lip—and Wilkes’s glee faltered.

“I think you’re the one who doesn’t know the first thing about your brother these days,” Wilkes said, trying to regain some of his smugness with a scoff. “Regulus has done a good deal to restore the family name _you_ helped tarnish, to show that the Blacks still have a proper sense of wizarding pride and responsibility…”

Wilkes looked almost misty eyed as he rambled. “Fuck...you sound like my mum,” Sirius muttered. “Are you trying to suck her cock or my brother’s?”

Sirius expected a violent rebuttal from Wilkes; it was almost more disturbing when the Death Eater just smirked and rolled up his left sleeve. The skull and snake along the inside of his arm was grotesque. “Your little brother was very eager to join the cause,” Wilkes said smugly. “He wanted to serve the Dark Lord so much that he didn’t even wait until he was of age to take the mark. Sixteen-years-old when he pledged himself, I hear your parents were very proud.”

_No!_

Sirius couldn’t look away from the Dark Mark on Wilkes’s arm, picturing the same macabre image on his brother’s skin. Regulus wouldn’t…he wouldn’t go that far… _Would he?_ In his mind’s eye though, Sirius could see the photographs and newspaper clippings Regulus had stuck on his bedroom wall in a collage of terror and violence, a shrine to Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

“He’s still in school of course, but only for a few more months. Then he can join us properly, start the real work.” 

Sirius felt sick at the thought of Regulus torturing people, of his baby brother inflicting the same sort of pain that had left Sirius himself screaming and praying to pass out…even wanting to die rather than keep suffering. 

Wilkes bent forward and grabbed Sirius by the jaw, lifting his head again, not wanting to miss his captive’s reaction. “Maybe we’ll keep you around long enough for Regulus to finish you off himself. Easter break’s only a week or two away…”

Sirius swallowed, his mouth and throat suddenly felt horribly dry. He didn’t want to believe Wilkes, but he did. The bastard wasn’t a good enough liar to pull off a story like this. Regulus was already a Death Eater then. Had he already hurt and tortured people? Had he already killed?

There were no words for what Wilkes had just told him. 

Wilkes had finally struck a blow that went deep, that hurt in a way not even the Cruciatus Curse could. Sirius had no more clever words, no insults to throw at Wilkes that could distract the Death Eater, but he was far from defenseless. 

Something like a growl, wordless and animalistic, rumbled through Sirius’s chest, and instincts that belonged to the Padfoot part of his brain took over. Jerking his head back, Sirius pulled out of Wilkes’s grip enough to twist and sink his teeth deep into the flesh between Wilkes’s thumb and forefinger.

Screaming shrilly, Wilkes lost his balance and tumbled backward. He managed to pull himself free, but he left a chunk of flesh behind. Sirius spat the bloody lump of skin and tissue onto the floor next to Wilkes and bared his gory teeth in a near canine snarl. Clutching his bleeding hand to his chest, Wilkes scrabbled away from Sirius. He half fell over his empty chair as he staggered to his feet, staring at Sirius with something akin to fright.

_Now who’s scared?_ Sirius thought.

Still, Wilkes’s uninjured hand was steady enough when he yelled _“Crucio!”_

As agony stole over every inch of his being, Sirius discovered that he did still have it in him to scream. He felt like his blood was boiling at the same time as his skin was flayed, his bones were cracking, and knives stabbed deep into every nerve-ending. It was every torment he’d ever suffered rolled into one curse, one short, hateful word.

Tears were streaming down Sirius’s cheeks, cutting trails through drying blood, when Wilkes finally lowered his wand again. He couldn’t breathe. Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision, and he welcomed it. He wanted to go back to the memory of Remus on the beach, or to simply slide into black oblivion. Anything would be better than this…

“Oh no! No, Black—you don’t get off easy!” Wilkes shouted. He grabbed Sirius by the hair once again and wrenched his head up. “You’re going to pay for that! You’re going to wish—”

Deep, rumbling laughter cut through Wilkes’s tirade. The door hinges squealed as it was pushed open and an unfamiliar man stepped into the sitting room. His clothing and the wild mane of tangled grey hair that surrounded his rough features made him look like a Muggle tramp more than anything else. He was large, though not so obviously muscular as Knaggs, but he moved with an ease that spoke of strength and speed. 

Wilkes took an involuntary step back, letting go of Sirius in his haste to put even a few more feet between himself and the new arrival.

“Please, don’t stop on my account,” the man said. His voice was rough, almost a natural growl but filled with something that sounded frighteningly like hunger. It sent a shiver down Sirius’s spine. 

“Greyback,” Wilkes sputtered. He tucked his bleeding hand behind his back and took another step away from the grizzled, menacing man. “You’re early…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the reviews of the last chapter! There were some really great ones and I love hearing from folks.


	8. Flight Instincts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new threat drives Sirius to make a desperate escape attempt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love that most of the reviews for the last chapter were just the word “No” repeated many times. Fenrir Greyback is ten different flavors of evil all in one waffle cone, and I hope I’ve managed to get some of that menace across here.

The ragged, predatory man Wilkes had called Greyback took several slow, measured steps into the sitting room. Wilkes matched him stride for stride, nearly tripping over his own feet as he backed away, desperate to keep the space between them.

“I-I wasn’t expecting you until later,” Wilkes stuttered.

Sirius shared Wilkes’s instinct to flee, but retreat wasn’t an option for him. Bound to his chair, he was caught as surely as a rabbit in a snare, and he felt just as helpless. 

“Oh, I’m right on time,” Greyback said amiably. Wilkes cringed and Greyback dismissed him with a satisfied smile, pleased with the Death Eater’s barefaced fear. Greyback inhaled deeply through his nose and his small, yellow-grey eyes swept across the room before settling on Sirius. 

“It’s easy to lose track of things when you’re having fun though, isn’t it?” Greyback’s smile widened into a carnivorous grin, exposing a mouthful of rotten teeth sharpened to unnatural points.

_Werewolf_.

The realization hit Sirius with the force of a mountain troll’s club. 

_Greyback was a werewolf._

It wasn’t the teeth or even the sniffing that gave him away. Sirius recognized a shadow of Greyback’s predatory grace from all the time he’d spent with Moony. Not Remus the man—his Remus was as occasionally awkward as any human, sometimes more so—but the wolf his boyfriend became every full moon. However, even Moony had nothing on the monster slowly stalking toward Sirius.

Greyback had gone to great lengths to give himself lupine traits even in his human form. His teeth had been sharpened, as had the long yellow nails on his hands. _Not like Remus at all,_ Sirius thought. If anything, Remus hid too much of himself to ensure no one saw the wolf within. No, this man was the manifestation of everything Wizards feared werewolves were. He was superstition made flesh.

“What sort of toy do you have here?” Greyback asked Wilkes, though he didn’t even spare a glance toward the skittish Death Eater. His focus was entirely on Sirius. 

It took an enormous effort—both physical and mental—but Sirius managed to raise his head and meet Greyback’s hungry gaze with a defiant glare. Greyback’s red tongue darted between his sharp teeth to lick at cracked lips. 

Sirius’s heart was hammering in his chest, but he didn’t look away or flinch. Both his human and canine instincts were snarling, figurative hackles raised and teeth bared. He could not let his panic show though. He couldn’t, because in some indefinable way that felt like the first step toward fearing Remus, and Sirius refused to start down that path.

“He—he’s none of your business, Greyback,” Wilkes said. The Death Eater’s voice was an octave higher than normal, but he was doing his best to sound authoritative, to pretend like he was still in charge of the situation.

“My pleasure then?” Greyback suggested. He reached out one finger and let a sharp, claw-like fingernail trail down the side of Sirius’s face, scraping lightly. It wasn’t enough to break skin, but the threat was there. Bile rose in Sirius’s throat. Remus was always so, so careful when he touched other people, especially Sirius. Always so worried that he might accidentally scratch or bite hard enough to break skin, to pass on even the slightest trace of lycanthropic contamination. 

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Sirius snapped, pulling away from Greyback’s menacing caress so violently he nearly overturned the chair he was tied to. He couldn’t stomach the thought of this monster casually threatening something Remus feared so much. It felt terrifyingly _intimate_. 

Greyback laughed as he reached for Sirius again. This time his large hand wrapped around Sirius’s neck. He didn’t squeeze hard enough to hurt, or to impede Sirius’s already shallow, gasping breaths, but all five of his claws dug lightly into the soft flesh of Sirius’s throat. If Sirius tried to pull away again he would cut himself on Greyback’s claws. “Love it when they struggle…” Greyback murmured. He was close enough for Sirius to smell rotten meat and old blood on his breath.

The werewolf inhaled deeply, taking in Sirius’s scent. His stubble prickled against Sirius’s skin. “Not my favorite normally,” Greyback murmured, quiet enough that only Sirius could hear him. “But you’re almost pretty beneath all that blood…lovely skin…just waiting to be torn…and you already smell of werewolf…”

Without thinking, Sirius tried to wrench away again, but Greyback caught him by the throat. His claws dug in just a fraction deeper, a silent warning. “Scent’s buried…hidden beneath your blood and sweat…and that _delicious_ fear…but you’ve been around one of my kind...been close to ‘em…Who was it?”

Sirius shut his eyes tightly and concentrated on holding perfectly still. Had it really been just that morning since he’d wrapped his arms around Remus? Since he’d kissed him? It felt like so much longer. Greyback could smell Remus’s scent on Sirius’s clothes and skin, but he clearly didn’t recognize it. And he never would. Sirius would die, would suffer any and every torment, before he would ever say a word about Remus to this monster.

_“No…”_ Sirius said weakly, not sure if he was protesting or pleading. 

Greyback chuckled, his hot breath raising goose bumps across the back of Sirius’s neck. “My business or not, my curiosity’s been… _tickled_ ,” Greyback said, his voice back to its loud bass rumble. “Who is your friend, Wilkes?”

“No one important,” Wilkes replied with a pitiful attempt at a scoff. The Death Eater had retreated all the way across the room to stand beside the table. “He was caught snooping around the neighborhood.”

“Hmm…” Greyback’s nails gently traced the taut tendons beneath Sirius’s skin, skimming over his pulse point. “What were you doing here, pretty boy?” It was the same taunt Knaggs had leveled at Sirius hours earlier. From Knaggs it had been an insult, from Greyback it sounded like a menu description. 

“That’s enough, _half-breed_ ,” Wilkes commanded shakily. “You’re here on the Dark Lord’s business, not for your own amusement.” Sirius was almost ready to thank Wilkes when Greyback reluctantly let go of his neck and took a step back.

“Of course, of course…business first,” Greyback said earnestly. “But _afterwards_ …”

Wilkes took a few tentative steps forward and looked between Sirius and Greyback. He must have seen some sign of the distress and disgust Sirius was trying to hide, because his round eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Afterwards, we’ll see…I still haven’t finished questioning him…perhaps you could help…” Wilkes agreed. “Maybe even take a bite or two…” From his expression Wilkes didn’t seem certain if he was intrigued or disgusted by the idea.

“To business then,” Greyback said. His grin showed every brown tooth in his mouth. He led the way out of the room. Wilkes, unwilling to have the werewolf at his back, followed reluctantly. The door squealed shut behind them.

“Bloody fuck…” Sirius whispered when their voices and footsteps had faded away. He could not be here when the two of them finished whatever business Voldemort had with a monster like Greyback. 

The only good thing to come from the encounter was that Sirius no longer felt the overwhelming desire to let himself slide back into unconsciousness with all its dreams and memories. His heart was pounding and his blood racing. His entire body was shaking, but it gave him the energy to flex his hands and reach into his back pocket. 

Three of Sirius’s fingers were broken, and the rest were more than half numb. He fumbled awkwardly, but carefully managed to pull out the shard of twisted silver he’d hidden and set it against his ropes again.

It was slow, clumsy work, but dread gave Sirius strength and adrenalin dulled the pain. Bit by bit, thread by thread, he sawed through the rope. Sirius couldn’t have said how long it took; his focus had narrowed to the slight back and forth motion of his improvised knife and the pressure of the fraying rope. When it finally gave way, Sirius nearly sobbed with relief.

Ruskin’s knots had been more intricate than he’d thought though. Cutting through one rope had only been enough to free his left wrist. Cursing under his breath, Sirius decided it would have to be enough. 

Tipping forward in the chair, Sirius closed his eyes, reached deep inside and called Padfoot forward. The transformation process was quick and usually painless, but he’d been right to worry about transforming while tied to a chair. The large, bear-like black dog yelped in pain as his right foreleg snapped and his shoulder joint was wrenched out of place. 

Dog and chair both hit the floor with a thud Padfoot could only hope wasn’t as loud as it sounded to his canine ears. Whimpering, Padfoot wriggled and clawed at the floorboards. Thankfully, ropes that had been painfully tight around his human limbs slipped easily off his paws. Finally free, the dog scrambled to his feet, his right foreleg was limp and useless, but three feet were enough for him to balance on.

His injured leg held off the ground, Padfoot limped away from the chair and transformed again. Sirius hissed with pain and ran a hesitant hand down his right arm. It still hung limp at his side. His shoulder was dislocated, and his forearm was broken in at least one place. There was nothing he could do for it now though. Gritting his teeth, Sirius stumbled toward the table. Pins and needles were shooting through his hands and feet, and his joints felt like they were made of jelly, but Sirius willed his body to move, and, for the moment, it obeyed.

Sirius caught himself against the edge of the table with his good hand and took a moment he knew he didn’t have to suck in a breath and ride out a wave of dizziness. When it had passed enough for him to stop seeing double, Sirius looked over the items scattered across the table. He saw his jacket, his boots, and his penknife. The mirror was gone of course, only a scorch mark and a bit of powdered glass on the table where it had been. Curiously, his cigarettes were also gone. They were easily replaceable though, what he really needed was— _there!_

The tip of Sirius’s wand stuck out from beneath Ruskin’s abandoned newspaper. He reached for it only to choke with horror as he only pulled up half a wand. A ragged dragon heartstring dangled from the broken shaft of ebony. Sirius wondered helplessly if it had broken when he’d fallen on the street or if someone had broken it on purpose. He was bitterly inclined to believe the latter. It seemed like the petty, cruel sort of thing Wilkes would do, though Sirius imagined Wilkes would have wanted Sirius to watch if he’d done it. Maybe Knaggs or Ruskin then.

His heart tore as he picked up the other half of his wand. The break was clean across, easily beyond repair. Still, he shoved both pieces in his pocket. This wasn’t good, he’d been counting on his wand to get him past locked doors or protective enchantments. He couldn’t even Apparate without it. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Sirius muttered, touching his useless right arm. He didn’t know how far he’d get even as Padfoot if he had to run to safety. There wasn’t time to mourn his broken wand though. He would have to make do without it. 

His eyes darted over the rest of the table, taking in the rolls of parchment that weren’t his. Sirius didn’t have time to determine if they were worth stealing. He would just have to hope there was some information in them the Order could use. He grabbed his jacket and pulled it on, painfully forcing his broken arm into its sleeve. Once it was on he stuffed the rolls of parchment inside and zipped it closed. 

There wasn’t time to bother with his boots and all their laces, but he did take his penknife and flipped it open. The blade wasn’t long, but without his wand it was the only weapon he had. If he had to transform he would have Padfoot’s sharp teeth and claws, but right now he needed his thumbs to get out of this room and the house beyond it.

Careful as he was, the hinges on the sitting room door still squealed when Sirius pulled it open. He tensed, half expecting to find Wilkes and Greyback right outside, waiting for him with wide, monstrous smiles. Poking his head through the doorway, Sirius sighed with relief when he saw nothing but an empty hallway as derelict as the sitting room. 

There were no candles to illuminate the passage, casting it into deep shadows and turning bits of refuse and broken wood into dangerous obstacles. The candlelight from the sitting room behind Sirius gave him just enough light to make out a staircase with a broken railing leading up to the first floor. He could hear the barest whisper of voices drifting down from somewhere above. It sounded like Wilkes and Greyback. 

That still left Knaggs and Ruskin unaccounted for. Sirius hadn’t seen either of them since Wilkes had begun torturing him in earnest. They could be anywhere now. He would need to be quiet and _fast_ to get out of the house.

Needing the light and not willing to risk the noisy hinges again, Sirius left the sitting room door open as he stepped out into the hallway. To his left the corridor ended at a half-open door spilling a thin shaft of warm candlelight and the smell of boiled cabbage down the hall. A kitchen, most likely. There were two other doors along the way, both closed with no light slipping through their cracks. 

However, only about twenty feet to Sirius’s right was another door. A broken fanlight above the lintel let in a thin haze of yellow-orange sodium light and a hint of fresh air.

The front door.

It was an easy choice.

Sirius was halfway to the door, which looked to be in about as much disrepair as the sitting room door, when a floorboard creaked behind him and light flooded the hallway. 

Whirling around, Sirius raised his penknife, holding it more like a wand than a knife. Ruskin stood at the other end of the hallway, just through the kitchen door. His wand was out, but still pointed at the ground. 

For a moment Sirius and Ruskin simply stared, both frozen in place. In his chest, Sirius’s heart was hammering so hard he thought it might burst from his chest. He didn’t have a wand, and he’d seen how fast Ruskin’s reflexes were. Ruskin didn’t raise his wand though as he took a step forward. In response Sirius took two backward, never taking his eyes off Ruskin.

They continued that slow, silent dance until Sirius’s back hit the front door, which groaned softly at the impact. 

“He got loose,” Ruskin said quietly, turning to glance over his shoulder briefly. Knaggs must be somewhere behind him in the kitchen. “He’s out here.” Sirius couldn’t fathom why the man was whispering instead of shouting and raising an alarm, but it was now or never. He only had the one arm, so he would have to drop the knife, grab the door handle, and run like there was a dragon on his heels.

There was no way he would make it. 

It was either try or surrender though, and either way Sirius was sure the result would be the same. He’d go down fighting if he could. There was some small comfort in the thought. 

“You don’t want to go out that way,” Ruskin said blandly. He took another step forward and Sirius moved. 

He threw the knife rather than just drop it. The penknife wasn’t meant to be thrown, and even if it had been Sirius had no clue how to do so properly. Still, he hoped a sharp object flying toward his head would startle Ruskin enough to buy a second or two.

“Sirius, _don’t!_ ” A voice hissed frantically as Sirius grabbed for the doorknob. He realized just as his hand made contact that the voice didn’t belong to Ruskin or Knaggs, but by then it was too late.

Fully expecting a curse to hit him in the back, Sirius was unprepared for the assault to come from the front. Something like a rampaging Erumpent slammed into his chest, knocking the air out of his lungs right before it threw him backwards.

Sirius landed halfway down the hallway with a crash that shook the floorboards and seemed to make the entire house groan. For a moment everything went black. Wilkes’s voice yelling down the stairs pulled him back. He couldn’t understand the words, but the tone was a mix of annoyed and apprehensive.

Something pressed down over Sirius’s mouth and a familiar voice hissed in his ear. “Don’t move, and don’t make a sound.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your views, reviews, kudos, bookmarks, and subscriptions! Only two or three chapters to go before this thing is completed!


	9. Gryffindor-Brand Stupidity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hardest part of war may be the waiting, something neither Lily or James has ever been very good at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter dodges back in time from where the last one left off, sort of telling what was going on over with other characters while the events of the last three chapters were happening.

Lily stood at a window near the front door of the Order’s farmhouse and waited. It felt like the world was burning down around her, and all she was allowed to do was stare out across the dark fields and watch for the flames. 

Not even twenty minutes after James and Peter had left to look for Sirius, Benjy Fenwick’s goshawk Patronus had arrived calling for help. He and Dorcas Meadowes were in Glasgow on a reconnaissance mission, and their cover had been blown by a nervous Death Eater who’d thought to cast a _Homenum Revelio_ , locating Dorcas hiding beneath Moody’s invisibility cloak. Dorcas and Benjy were now pinned down by half a dozen Death Eaters in an old churchyard, dodging curses while fire from a badly aimed curse threatened to spread from a chapel to nearby houses and alert the Muggle fire department. 

Moody had sent the newly arrived Prewetts and Marlene off to help as soon as the Patronus had vanished. The old Auror had his head in the fireplace now, Floo-calling back to Auror Headquarters to wrangle some official assistance for the fiasco up in Scotland. Sturgis was at the kitchen table taking notes and trying to keep everything organized in the middle of the chaos.

Meanwhile, Lily had been relegated to guard duty. Everything was going wrong all at once, and she’d been ordered to stand at the window and wait. A rational, Ravenclawish part of her knew it was important to have someone standing guard with so many people in the field and everything going to hell. Lily wasn’t a Ravenclaw though, and she chafed at how utterly useless she felt at the moment.

She glanced down at her watch. Ten more minutes before James and Peter were due back.

Lily was trying not to worry, but she couldn’t help it, not with the way everything else was going tonight. She tried to reassure herself that they would be fine, that James was clever and talented—but so was Sirius—and that they had James’s invisibility cloak—never mind that Dorcas had had Moody’s own cloak when she’d been discovered. 

Even when she managed to tear her thoughts away from her husband’s search for Sirius, or from the firefight up in Glasgow, there was no relief for Lily as her restless thoughts turned to Remus. Yet another friend who could be hurt or in danger, and they had no way of knowing. Moody claimed not even he had a way to safely contact Remus. Only Dumbledore knew the details of his mission. Tonight, that terrified Lily.

Sighing, Lily closed her eyes as she tried not to imagine a devastated look on Remus’s face. Even if he wasn’t in danger right now, Remus should be here. He and Sirius were practically married, even if they lacked the rings and the ceremony, even if they were only officially out to a handful of people. Remus deserved to know the man he loved was in trouble. If it were her and James, she’d want to know, she’d _need_ to be doing something to save him. Remus, she was certain, would feel the same.

When she opened her eyes again, Lily’s breath caught in her chest. Far across the fields, a light appeared, bobbing through the tall grass and moving straight toward the old farmhouse. _Hinkypunk_ , was Lily’s first thought, dredging up old memories from her third year Defence Against the Dark Arts class. They led travelers astray, which felt strangely fitting, because when Lily realized what the light actually was she almost ran straight out the door.

Catching herself in the open doorway, Lily raised her wand and watched as the figure behind the wand light drew close enough to identify. Peter Pettigrew, short, plump, and half as athletic as a turnip, was running full tilt across the field. 

And he was alone.

Peter lurched through the garden gate, panting and red-faced in the glow of his wand light. Lily was surprised to find that when she pointed her own wand at him that her hand didn’t shake, because inside she was screaming. Staggering the last few steps to the door, Peter bent nearly double, hands braced against his trembling thighs as he gasped for air. A hundred desperate questions were on the tip of Lily’s tongue, but she shoved them down and asked the damn security question.

“What did you and I blame on James at Frank and Alice’s wedding?” Lily asked. The tremble that hadn’t made it to her fingers did come out in her voice. 

“Puked…you…you puked in…Mrs. Longbot…Longbottom’s…handbag…I told her…James did it…” Peter wheezed, looking like he might just vomit as well.

Lily lowered her wand and took a step out the door. “Where’s my husband, Peter?” She demanded.

“Fine…safe…watching…we found…found a house…” Peter said. He managed to straighten, though his face was bright red and wet with sweat and he pressed a hand to his side. 

Lily let out a shuddering breath and nearly pulled Peter off his feet as she swept him into a hug. Safe! James was safe. She wanted him to be the one here in her arms, but so long as he was all right. That would have to do for the moment.

“Is that Pettigrew?” Moody’s gruff voice yelled from inside. “Stop making targets of yourselves and get him inside!” 

Peter was still wobbly on his feet, but he followed Lily inside as she whispered a quick outline of everything that had happened since he and James had left. His eyes were wide with shock by the time they reached the kitchen where he collapsed into the nearest chair. 

“Do…do you think…it has…has anything to do...with what’s happened to…to Sirius?” Peter asked nervously.

“Doubtful,” Moody growled as he dropped into the chair across from Peter. “Even if he broke, Black didn’t know anything about what Meadowes and Fenwick were up to. Always knew the Order couldn’t stay hidden forever, didn’t figure it’d all go to hell at once though.” Moody shook his head and sighed. Through his gruff tone Lily thought she could hear a hint of worry. Tonight was spiraling beyond even the grizzled Auror’s control.

Not knowing what to do with herself, Lily stood behind Peter, her hands gripping the back of his chair tightly. She didn’t believe Sirius would ever reveal Order secrets, no matter what, but she felt sick when she thought of what Death Eaters might do to try and get information out of him. An image of a sixteen-year-old Sirius as he’d been right after running away from home swam through her mind. Bruised, bleeding, hurting, and vulnerable. She didn’t want to imagine him like that ever again.

“Now then, where’s Potter?” Moody repeated Lily’s earlier question. He scowled at Peter like he was a fearsome criminal, and Peter shrank into his chair. “Why the devil would the two of you split up?”

Sturgis used his wand to fill a teacup with water and pressed it into Peter’s hands. Peter gulped down it down so fast he nearly choked himself, but when he stopped coughing he could speak almost normally. “James is fine, he’s keeping watch on a…well, we think it’s a house, but there were so many protection spells we couldn’t really _see_ what’s on the other side of them. We were afraid if we both came back it would take hours to find it again.”

Moody grunted as Sturgis refilled Peter’s cup. “Any sign of Black?”

Peter nodded and bit his lip nervously. “I could smell his cigarettes. We couldn’t see or hear anything through the wards, and you can’t get close enough to touch it, but I could smell Sirius’s cigarettes.”

“That’s a pretty thin lead to go on,” Moody replied. Lily could see the calculations in his squinting black eyes. He was trying to decide how many resources he could dedicate to heavily protected _something_ on the thinnest evidence that Sirius might be inside while they had a literal firefight in Glasgow still happening. 

“I have a good nose,” Peter insisted, wrinkling the nose in question. “And Sirius has been smoking the same brand of those foul things since we were fifteen. I _know_ the smell.” His eyes darted toward Lily for a moment and she read what Peter _wasn’t_ saying out loud in them. Rats, she’d been surprised to learn, had an extraordinary sense of smell, one of the best in the animal world.

“He’s right,” Lily said, throwing her support behind Peter. “I would know the smell of Sirius’s cigarettes anywhere, and you could smell them from the other side of a Quidditch Pitch.”

“We found blood too,” Peter added. Everyone around the table tensed and Lily would have sworn she felt the wood beneath her fingers groan as her grip tightened on the chair back. Peter flinched under Moody’s flinty stare. “N-not much…but it was two blocks away from the warded area, and there was a cigarette butt right nearby…another one of Sirius’s…”

“We need to get inside that house,” Lily said. She was already sorting through the spells she knew that might help them break through protection spells. 

“Slow your hippogriffs, Potter,” Moody snapped. He’d finished his calculations then. Lily bit the inside of her cheek, knowing she wouldn’t like the Auror’s conclusions. “If we can’t see through whatever spells they’ve set up, we don’t know what we’re up against. Charging straight in curses flying is a bad idea, and if Black’s still alive it could get him killed.” 

Lily and Peter both grimaced at the suggestion that they might already be too late to save Sirius.

“We’re stretched thin already,” Moody continued. “I’ve yet to hear back from anyone up in Glasgow, the Longbottoms are on official duty, Elphias Doge is in Ireland, and Dumbledore’s still in his damned meeting with Bagnold. We don’t have the manpower for a full-on assault. We have to do this _smart_.” His eyes fixed on Lily as if he could read the objections in every line of her body. “And sometimes that means slow.”

“So we sit here and do nothing?” Lily spat. Anger was rising like an electric current through her chest, increasing from a low buzz into something hot and dangerous. 

“No, we plan, we prepare,” Moody said firmly. He swiveled in his seat and jabbed a finger at Sturgis. “Podmore! Go track down Vance; she’s the closest thing we’ve got to a curse-breaker. I want her on hand to take a look at what we’re up against. Pettigrew! Go back to Potter and maintain a watch. Send a Patronus if anything changes. Otherwise, you _watch_ , got it?”

Peter’s shoulders sagged, but he gave Moody a small nod.

“I’ll go with him,” Lily volunteered. Waiting there had to be better than waiting here. She was going to go mad if she stayed here standing at a window.

“You’ll stay right here, missy,” Moody ordered. “We need to keep someone on guard duty, and besides—” He fixed her with a mistrustful glare. “—I imagine I can trust any promises your husband made to _me_ about as far as I can throw an ogre, but a promise he made to _you_ , well, that he might actually keep.”

Lily had to clench the back of Peter’s chair so tightly she was certain there would be splinters beneath her fingernails. Otherwise, she would have gone for her wand and tried her level best to curse Moody senseless. 

So often, Lily was seen as the voice of reason, as the steady hand that guided and restrained her impulsive husband. People sometimes forgot that she had been sorted into Gryffindor right alongside James. No one ever doubted Lily’s bravery, but they did overlook her own reckless streak. Granted, she was usually the very soul of caution when compared to James and Sirius, but when someone she loved was hurt or threatened…Well, the Sorting Hat had done its job well with Lily.

At another bark from Moody, Peter climbed back out of his chair, knees still wobbling a little. Moody, used to Aurors with years of training and rigid disciple under their belts, seemed confident that his orders would be obeyed. He got out of his own chair and stormed back toward the fireplace, grabbing a pinch of Floo powder. 

Lily knew she would never get away with ignoring Moody completely and Disapparating with Peter, so she did the next best thing. She pulled Peter into another close hug, and tilted her head to whisper in his ear. 

“Tell James, that if he thinks he can rescue Sirius without getting himself killed, then—just this once—he has my permission to do something stupid without me.”

*

James stood in front of a broken window, a headache forming behind his right eye as he stared through a gap in the boards across the street at a house that didn’t exist. It seemed like it existed, but only if James glanced at it from the corner of his eye or thought very hard about something else when he looked at it. The moment he tried to pay attention to the house it simply wasn’t there. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear anything from inside of it, and couldn’t get close enough to touch it.

Even now that James knew the house was there, his brain did not want to think about it at all. Whoever had cast those spells had done a damn good job. The wards and camouflage might even be better than the protections around the Order’s headquarters. If he and Peter hadn’t been Animagi they never would have noticed a thing.

Thankfully, humans—wizard and Muggle alike—had shite senses of smell, so they rarely thought of concealing their scents. Not even when laying protection spells around a Death Eater safe house. Wormtail had sniffed them out, following a trail of human bodies, cabbage, Sirius’s cigarettes…and Sirius’s blood. Under different circumstances, James would have laughed himself silly at their oversight. There was nothing funny about this situation though, because James knew his best friend was on the other side of those wards. 

James swore under his breath and leaned forward to rest his forehead against the boards covering most of the broken window. He was still wearing his invisibility cloak, just in case anyone inside the hidden house decided to look across the street. He was going mad standing here and waiting for Peter, waiting to see if anything happened across the street. 

He _knew_ Sirius was somewhere just across the street in that house he couldn’t see. His best friend was hurt and in very big trouble, but he was still alive. 

Something moved in the yellow-orange glow of a streetlamp and when he squinted, James could make out a plump grey rat scampering across the cracked pavement. It paused at the edge of a dry, weedy garden and stood up on its hind legs, its nose twitching before it dropped back down to all fours and hurried out of the light again. 

James stepped away from the window and walked out into the hallway in time to watch the same rat squeeze through a small chink in the front door. “Over here, Wormtail,” James said quietly, pulling the invisibility cloak off.

In the blink of an eye, the rat had transformed back into his friend. Peter looked around the hallway, chewing on his lower lip. His eyes darted nervously over everything, taking in the dubious stability of the house James had chosen to squat in. 

“What’s the word at headquarters?” James asked eagerly. “Did you bring Moody? Lily?” He was eager for reinforcements, eager to get this thing done. Lily and Moody would likely be furious when they discovered what he’d already done, but surely they would understand in the end. Lily knew James had never been one to sit by and patiently wait for anything.

Peter shook his head and grimaced. James felt his stomach clench. Not good news then. “No…no one’s coming,” Peter said reluctantly. “Not for a while at least. Dorcas and Benjy got into big trouble up in Scotland and—”

“And that somehow trumps the trouble Sirius is in?” James asked angrily. “Peter! They’re _torturing_ him in there! We can’t wait!”

Peter cowered before his clenched fists and snapping eyes. A small, distant part of James felt guilty. This wasn’t Peter’s fault, but James desperately wanted to yell and curse at _someone_.

“M-Moody thinks w-we should w-wait,” Peter stuttered. “B-but—” he interjected quickly when James opened his mouth to protest. “Lily said—she said you have her permission to…to do something stupid.” Peter didn’t look like he relished the idea, but he squared his shoulders and gave James a nod that said he was ready to follow his lead, wherever it led. 

Peter wasn’t very brave on his own, but he could always be counted on when it came to helping his friends.

“Good, that’s good,” James said. He turned toward the door across the hall from the room he’d been watching from and nudged the door open with his foot. “Because I already did something pretty stupid…”

Peter took a step forward and peeked around the corner of the doorframe at the pot-bellied man in wrinkled grey robes writhing on the dirty floor as he shouted muffled protests through a gag.


	10. Unforgiveable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Peter are forced to question exactly how far they’re willing to go to save Sirius.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took _months_ for two reasons. 1) I got distracted with other projects mainly _The Dog You Feed_ and NaNoWriMo. 2) It was incredibly difficult to write. I don’t find James as easy to write as Lily, Sirius, and Remus to begin with, and this chapter attempts to go deep into his character, his sense of right and wrong, and how both the war and his best friend being in danger affects the former two. I won’t blame anyone who disagrees with it, or who believes it’s out of character for any reason, but I do stand by it.
> 
> Here’s hoping the wait was worth it for you guys!

Peter blinked several times, his jaw hanging open as he stared at the wizard lying bound and gagged in the middle of the room. “I was gone for less than half an hour, and you…you _kidnapped_ someone?” Peter squeaked.

James cringed. He knew he’d done a reckless, impulsive thing, something that Moody would undoubtedly label “Gryffindor brand stupid.” It would seem that, in Sirius’s absence, James had adopted some of his best friend’s less admirable qualities. 

When the grey-robed wizard had stepped through the wards, appearing as if from thin air, smoking a very familiar-smelling cigarette, James had moved without a second thought, driven by a wave of sudden irrational fury. Whatever meager sense of caution or forethought James had ever possessed had vanished faster than the puff of smoke the other wizard exhaled. 

James had broken his promises to both Moody and Lily, and he’d been lucky he hadn’t died an instant after his hand darted through the edges of the invisibility cloak to cast a stunning spell. For all James had known there could have been twenty full-fledged Death Eaters standing right on the other side of the wards. No curses had flown in his direction though, and no one had come to the other man’s aid when James had dragged the limp figure under his cloak. Not even when the man’s feet kept trailing out beneath the hem of the cloak while James beat a hasty retreat to the abandoned house across the street.

“Turn around seemed like fair play since he helped abduct Sirius,” James said as he leaned back against the doorframe. With Peter here he felt a familiar pressure to look casual, to act like he knew what he was doing, like he had the situation in hand. In truth James doubted he’d ever felt less in control and less confident in his entire life. 

It was hard to believe that only that morning he had been charming confetti and streamers to surprise his wife. He’d been unthinkingly, stupidly happy just a few hours ago. Now he was so anxious and terrified his heart felt like it was trying to Apparate right out of his chest, twisting and squeezing painfully behind his ribs.

James was beginning to realize he was not cut out for war.

He’d been praying that Peter would return with Moody. The Auror would have known what to do; Moody was intimidating and experienced, everything James was not in a situation like this. Moody wasn’t here though, and he wouldn’t be coming anytime soon from the sound of it. No one had come looking for the wizard James had kidnapped yet, but if he’d just dodged out for a smoke break then time was not on their side. Or Sirius’s.

When Peter continued to stare at him in stupefied panic, James shifted uncomfortably against the splintery wood. He hated to see his own doubts and fears reflected in Peter’s face.

“He stepped out of the wards for a smoke break.” James said defensively. Reaching into his pocket, James pulled out a half-crushed pack of cigarettes and tossed them to Peter, who was so startled he actually caught them. Peter turned the paper box over in his hands and frowned. They were Sirius’s cigarettes. There was no mistaking them, not even for another package of the same brand.

Half the reason Sirius smoked was to have something to do with his hands when he was bored or anxious. Without a cigarette between his fingers he tended to pick at or shred anything he could get his hands on. Even with a cigarette he still engaged in his destructive little tics. He would pick at and toy with his paper cigarette boxes until they began to tear and fray in unique ways. This one was missing a corner, and both O’s in the word “WOODBINE” had been carefully scratched off by a fingernail.

Peter swallowed. He could recognize the signs of Sirius’s nervous tics too.

“I suppose stealing a bloke’s cigarettes falls way down the list compared to torturing him, but still, it’s the principle of the thing,” James wasn’t sure if he was attempting a joke or not. Either way it fell flat and sour on his tongue.

“Who is he?” Peter asked, glancing back to the man squirming on the floor. 

“Absalom Ruskin,” James replied. Peter shook his head. The name didn’t mean any more to him than it had to James. It had been the first question James had asked after he’d revived Ruskin.

“And…Sirius?” Peter was gnawing on his lip so badly it gave his words a slight lisp.

“Alive.” James said. He looked away, suddenly unable to meet Peter’s eye. “Sirius is alive,” James repeated what Ruskin had told him. That was the good news, and it only just outweighed the bad. James swallowed around the enormous lump that had risen in his throat making it difficult to speak, to even breathe, but he forced the next words out. “He’s hurt though, and…Marcus Wilkes is in there…”

“Oh fuck!” Peter went pale, recalling the many times Wilkes had been the target of their pranks back at school. “Wilkes—you and Sirius—oh _fuck!_ We have to get him out of there!” 

James nodded jerkily in agreement with Peter’s panicked reaction. Sirius was currently in the hands of one of their old boyhood enemies. Wilkes had never been the worst of the little Slytherin gang they’d often clashed with at school. He didn’t have the brains or the brawn to be terribly impressive, always following other members of his circle around, mimicking them and eager for their attention. Marcus Wilkes might not be the most dangerous of that lot, but he was still a nasty piece of work and he would be willing—no, _eager_ —to hurt Sirius.

James nodded again. The lump in his throat was surely his heart. He could feel its thunderous pulse against the back of his Adam’s apple. Having Peter onboard, and Lily’s implicit support bolstered James’s own courage as well as reinforcing a sense of urgency. If Moody had other priorities then they were going to have to do this themselves.

Suddenly, James felt a fierce pride for what he’d done snatching Ruskin. He’d grabbed them a lead, a way in through those wards. It was apparently the only help he was going to get. 

The only problem was, Ruskin wouldn’t tell James how to get through the wards around the house. 

After a few threats and a quick _Levicorpus_ Ruskin had confessed to everything else. He told James that he and a man named Knaggs had stunned Sirius and taken him to the safe house they ran. Although not trusted enough to be an actual Death Eater, Ruskin admitted to following Voldemort and even to committing crimes in his name. In an attempt to deflect James’s anger away from himself, Ruskin had even told James how Wilkes had tortured Sirius. 

However, Ruskin had drawn the line at telling James how to get through the wards around the safe house. He’d flinched when James had shoved a wand in his face, but had remained adamant. _“You don’t scare me…not half as much as_ they _do,”_ Wilkes had told him.

James had sworn viciously and shoved the gag back in Ruskin’s mouth before storming out of the room to go and wait for Peter to return with reinforcements. Moody had been right, James wasn’t an Auror. He had no training in interrogation, no clue how to pull a confession out of the prisoner he’d taken. 

“What do we do?” Peter asked. 

Before he answered Peter, James pulled out his wand and pointed it in Ruskin’s direction. _“Muffliato,”_ he whispered. There was already a silencing spell on the room to keep anyone outside from hearing them, but James didn’t want Ruskin to hear their conversation either.

“I already asked him how to get through the wards, threatened him, but he’s more scared of Wilkes and someone named Greyback than he is of me,” James said. He raised his free hand to rub at the sharp pain of a headache lancing behind his right eye. “I-I don’t know what to do.”

That was a lie. James knew exactly what he had to do, but somehow, even with his best friend’s life hanging in the balance, he recoiled at the thought of it. 

In school, James had been a right bastard. He could admit as much now. He’d been a bully, an arrogant toerag—as Lily had so eloquently labeled him more than once. James had hexed, pranked, and harassed his fellow students, often for no better cause than his own fleeting amusement.

If he closed his eyes, James could still picture himself at his worst. The end of fifth year, tormenting Severus Snape just because he harbored an adolescent hatred of the boy, and because he and Sirius were bored. James still despised Snape, even if he hadn’t seen the bastard since the end of school, but he could admit he’d been horrible, even if Snape had given as good as he got most of the time. 

Even with Snape there had been lines James had never crossed though. He’d never tried to do real, physical injury to his nemesis, and when Sirius had carelessly put Snape in danger, James had risked his own life to save the greasy prat.

Ruskin was a coward. He’d spilled valuable secrets after James hoisted him in the air by his ankle and barked some vague threats at him. However, the would-be Death Eater wasn’t entirely stupid. He’d caught on to the fact that James hadn’t followed through with any of his threats he’d leveled, and when it came to revealing the way through the wards, Ruskin had called James’s bluff.

He was still a coward though. Unlike Sirius, Ruskin wouldn’t hold out against real pain. It would be easy to break him. So long as James was willing to follow through with the threats he’d made and curse Ruskin.

James had been a bully, but he’d never resorted to the dark arts. He despised them. 

“We have to make him tell us,” Peter said unhelpfully.

“I’m open to any brilliant ideas you have,” James snapped. He didn’t have the patience to even feel bad when Peter flinched at his tone. The truth was, sometimes Peter was unexpectedly clever. There never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to the brilliant ideas that sometimes seemed to pop into Peter’s head, but some of their best pranks and greatest achievements had originated with Peter. Right now, however, Peter seemed capable of doing nothing but fidgeting and wringing his hands.

“Imperius.”

James froze like the proverbial deer in the headlights Lily and Remus made jokes about.

_“What?”_ James hissed, spinning to face Peter, who cringed back, but balled his hands into trembling fists.

“The Imperius Curse,” Peter repeated. “He would answer our questions and—”

“Peter! That’s an _Unforgiveable_ Curse!” James stared at his friend in shock. He never would have expected Peter to think of—to _suggest_ —such a thing. One single use of the Imperius Curse was worth a life sentence in Azkaban. It was the darkest sort of magic.

Peter shook his head. “It’s the only thing I could think of. We don’t have…” Peter swallowed and refused to look James in the eye. “We don’t have any other ideas.”

“We can’t…” James said. He swallowed down the lump in his throat that threatened to strangle him, but in its wake came a rising tide of bile. 

“It wouldn’t…wouldn’t _hurt_ him,” Peter said. “As soon as Sirius was safe we could remove the curse and…and no harm done, right?”

James shook his head. He didn’t believe for a moment it could be that easy, or that innocent. He looked at Ruskin, still squirming on the floor. The wizard was balding and middle-aged, with a round potbelly and a grease stain down the front of his robes. He wasn’t intimidating; he was piteous. James felt wretched even thinking about using an unforgiveable curse on the man.

_He’s still the enemy though,_ James reminded himself. They were at war, and this was the enemy. 

“I-I can try it,” Peter said. He was shaking, but his shoulders were squared. James wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Peter look so brave. He looked so uncertain, but determined all the same. 

That was what did it for James. It had been Peter’s idea, but he couldn’t let his friend do something like this. He couldn’t let Peter shoulder that burden. 

“No,” he said with quiet finality. “I’ll do it.” James tried not to dwell on the look of relief on Peter’s face, or the gut-churning nausea rising in his own stomach. 

James pulled out the invisibility cloak and tossed it to Peter, who fumbled the catch and had to hastily pluck the silvery fabric up off the dirty floor. “Go stand watch, Wormtail,” James ordered. He couldn’t do this, not if Peter was watching. “Let me know if anyone comes outside, or if you see anything else suspicious.”

Unspeakably grateful for the excuse to leave, Peter nodded hastily and threw on the cloak, vanishing before he was even through the door. James was glad. Not even ten seconds after his friend passed through the silencing spell surrounding the room, James turned into the nearest corner and vomited.

He wiped his mouth with the back of a shaking hand as he tried to close his mind to what his parents would think about what he was about to do. They’d both fought against Grindelwald back in their day. Had they ever faced a situation like this? Had his mother or father ever done something they knew was wrong for the right reasons? If so, they’d left it out of the stories they’d told James as a child. 

And what would Lily think of him when she found out? Would she forgive him? Sirius was almost like a brother to her; she would be just as desperate to get him back, would she? Would it change the way she looked at him, once she knew James was willing to cast a curse that was typically the purview of Death Eaters?

James supposed he would find out, because if this was what it took to save his best friend, he would do it. He would cross any line for his friends, for his family.

Crouching down on the floor next to Ruskin, James vanished the man’s gag before cancelling the anti-eavesdropping spell. 

“Last chance. Tell me how to get through the wards and get my friend out.” He tried to channel Moody’s gruff inflection into his words, but it only made James feel foolish, like a little boy playing at being a big, tough Auror. Merlin, James felt like that far too often these days, like a child whose war games had somehow become real and deadly. 

Still, Ruskin must have sensed some sort of change, because his throat worked as he swallowed and shook his head. “Y-you can’t get th-through,” the wizard stuttered quietly. “It’s im-impossible.”

Hope sizzled through James’s veins like lightning. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go through with this. Maybe all Ruskin had needed was a little time to stew in his predicament. 

“What do you mean?” James demanded.

“You—you don’t have the Dark Mark,” Ruskin answered.

“Neither do you,” James pointed out, tapping the man’s blank, bare arm with the tip of his wand. Ruskin yelped like he’d been jabbed with a hot poker.

“N-no, but…I’m—I was invited. You have to be invited if you don’t have the Mark.”

“And you could invite me in?” James asked. He must be able to invite others in. How else could he and Knaggs have taken Sirius through the wards after they’d stunned him?

For a moment, Ruskin hesitated, then he shook his head frantically. “No—no I can’t do it…”

James didn’t believe him for a moment. 

_“Baubillious!”_ James barked, aiming his wand just to the side of Ruskin’s head. A bright, yellow-white bolt of lightning shot out of the tip of his wand and hit the floorboard right next to Ruskin’s left ear. The crack it made was akin to thunder and only barely louder than Ruskin’s scream. The wood smoldered, blackened where the spell had hit.

“Lie to me again, and the next one won’t hit the floor,” James said. His knees felt like someone had hit him with a jelly legs jinx, but his voice was steady, rougher even than usual. “You can get me in, can’t you?”

Chins wobbling, Ruskin cringed. “I-I won’t.” 

James closed his eyes. This was it then. He’d been a bully before, but he’d never been a monster.

Yet, to save Sirius’s life, he was willing to become one.

Climbing back to his feet, James took several wobbling steps away from Ruskin. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. He had to mean it, or the spell wouldn’t work and they’d be back to square one. 

He pictured Sirius the day he’d come to live with the Potters for good. Behind his tightly closed eyelids, James could still see the fading bruises across his best friend’s skin, the cut on his cheek that had scarred, and—worst of all—the knowledge that there were wounds that hadn’t left a physical mark unless you counted the haunted look in Sirius’s eyes.

Wilkes would do worse.

James’s eyes snapped open and the curse hissed out from between his clenched teeth.

_“Imperio.”_


	11. The Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Peter attempt a daring rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear, it's been far too long since I updated this story. The good news is, here's a chapter, and I'm 95% sure there will only be two more to come before this story is wrapped up. Thanks for sticking with me, lovely readers!

Ruskin stood still and silent in the center of the room as James puked in the corner again. His throat burned and the taste of vomit lingered in his mouth even after his stomach was empty and he was dry heaving nothing but bits of phlegm. The headache that had been building in his skull all night was stabbing the nerves behind his eye worse than ever.

The worst feeling of all though was the one that ran from the wand in his fingers all the way up his arm and neck before digging into his mind. It was a warm, tingling sensation, not painful or prickly, but James wanted to tear it out of his skin. He wanted to rip open his own veins and scratch them clean. It made him feel dirty…tainted…

“James…is everything all right?” Peter called through the door, timid and apprehensive as he knocked. 

James straightened. His knees felt like someone had cast a jelly-legs jinx on him, but he walked to the door and pulled it open. Peter’s nose wrinkled in disgust as he smelled the acid stink of James’s vomit. He didn’t say a word about it though. Instead, his eyes drifted toward Ruskin, still standing in the middle of the room. Waiting for a command. 

Bile burned its way up James’s throat again, but he swallowed it down again. “Yeah, Pete…it worked.”

They both turned toward to stare at Ruskin, who stared vacantly back. 

James’s free hand drifted to his wand arm, fingers pressing against his forearm, nails biting into the flesh. He needed that little bit of pain. In the back of his mind, James could feel a blank, malleable presence he knew was Ruskin. It felt like a cup make of soft clay, easy for him to fill or mold as he willed. 

“James,” Peter said his name quietly, concern and hurry in his voice.

“Right,” James said, running his tongue over his dry lips. He’d cast the curse; the damage was done. He could have his fucking crisis of consciousness after this was over. They didn’t have time for it right now. “Take us through the wards to your safe house.”

The command seemed to echo through James’s head and down his arm, through his wand, and across the empty air into Ruskin. That soft clay warped but not quite how James wanted it to. Ruskin was resisting, a sliver of fear stabbing through James’s control.

You had to mean it to cast an Unforgiveable Curse. 

James bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to make it bleed as he willed himself to remember _why_ he was doing this. His best friend was hurt, could be dying. 

_Take us through the wards!_

He didn’t say the words out loud this time. There was no need. It made him feel light-headed, but he felt no resistance when he pushed his thoughts, his commands toward Ruskin.

“Of course,” Ruskin said pleasantly. There was a bland, apathetic thread to his voice and no hint of the bone-deep fear that had been there before. “It’s a simple enough spell, but I will need my wand to cast it.”

James balked. He could feel the shape of that clay within his mind and the warm tingle down his arm that said the spell was still working, but the thought of giving a weapon to an enemy combatant made him pause. He did it though, despite Peter’s whispered misgivings.

It wasn’t so much the guileless look in Ruskin’s eyes that made James pull the other wizard’s wand out of his pocket. It was the potential grim satisfaction of an honest fight if Ruskin really did break through the spell. James had joined the Order of the Phoenix to fight people whose actions were worse than his own, not this.

Ruskin took the wand and muttered an incantation before tapping the wand first against his own chest and then against James’s forehead. He couldn’t help but cringe as the wand tip touched his skin. Beside him Peter was tense, his own wand pointed at Ruskin, just in case.

There was a sharp sensation, almost like the jab of a pin popping a balloon in James’s skull, and then his headache vanished. While Ruskin repeated the spell on Peter, James threw the cloak on and walked out into the front room. Through the window he could now see a house where his mind had previously refused to acknowledged one before.

It was rather anticlimactic.

James had been expecting something grander, or even something grandly horrible to be hiding behind the wards. It was just a house though, dilapidated and nearly identical to the ones surrounding it. The only real difference was that there were lights on in this house. James’s heart sped up at the sight of them. 

Sirius was in there, along with Ruskin’s partner and at least one Death Eater. 

James could feel his renewed anxiety transmitting down the Imperius Curse that bonded him to Ruskin. He could feel the other man respond to his impatience. Ruskin walked into the room followed closely by Peter, who was rubbing his temples.

“We need to go,” James said, pulling the hood of the cloak off so his friend could see at least part of him. “Transform, Wormtail.”

“What about him?” Peter asked, eying Ruskin, who was waiting for them near the door. 

“We’re already going to have to obliviate the fuck out of him,” James said. _What’s one more nastily abusive spell when I’m already violating another person’s free will,_ he added silently, loathing it all the more with every second. 

Peter still looked suspicious, but he twitched and suddenly shrank down until a fat grey rat sat in his place. When James stuck a hand out from the cloak, the Wormtail climbed onto it and let James set him on his shoulder before pulling the hood up and vanishing them both completely. 

“We’re right behind you, take us through the wards to Sirius,” James whispered, pushing the command down through his arm and his wand to Ruskin. The older wizard nodded and led the way out the door and across the street. There was no way the other wizard could see them, but he seemed to almost sense James through the curse the same way James could sense him. It added another level of disquietude to James’s thoughts.

James could still feel the wards as they approached them. They were similar to Muggle-repelling charms James had used before. Even now, with the counterspell Ruskin had cast over them, James could still feel a slight tickle in the back of his mind that said there was somewhere else he needed to be, something he needed to do right now, far away. It was simple enough to push through the feeling now though, to keep his feet moving forward along the pavement. 

His skin tingled unpleasantly at the touch of the magic. On his shoulder, Wormtail’s claws dug through his shirt, scraping at skin as the rat reacted to the spells as well.

“This way,” Ruskin said, putting his wand away. “We should use the back door rather than the front. There’s a nasty knockback spell on that door, so it’s easier to go around than it is to unhex it.” 

“Can we Apparate in or out?” James asked quietly. Much as he’d like to stealth his way both in and out, if Sirius was hurt too badly Apparating would be the quickest way to get him to help.

“No,” Ruskin replied. “No one can do that inside the wards, you’ll have to get back out.”

“Well that’s not ideal,” James muttered. The rat on his shoulder squeaked his agreement.

James’s human nose could smell the stink of boiled cabbage Peter had described earlier. There were lights on in the kitchen windows and upstairs as well. His heart was hammering behind his ribs, trying to beat its way straight out of his chest.

Ruskin reached for the door, but before he could open it, the door jerked inward and the silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered man loomed before them. The warm light of the kitchen. “The hell have you been, Ruskin?” The large figure asked irritably. 

Panic flooded James’s mind and some of it seemed to pass on to Ruskin because he stammered before James regained some control of himself. It was enough to mentally feed Ruskin a lie. He didn’t know how the hell Death Eaters and dark wizards managed to maintain an Imperius Curse on someone for long periods of time or with great distances between them. Ten minutes and five feet of separation were already draining James magically and mentally.

“Sorry, Knaggs, I thought I saw something across the street when I went out for a smoke,” Ruskin answered the large man, who had finally moved out of the doorway enough for Ruskin to walk through. “It was nothing though, just a stray cat.” 

“Nasty Mudblood habit,” Knaggs wrinkled his nose at the cigarette stink that clung to Ruskin. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re back. Wilkes and his ‘guest’ are—”

With Ruskin safely in the kitchen, Knaggs tried to close the door. Only for it to rebound off something he couldn’t see. James had managed to get a hand up before the door could hit him in the face, but he couldn’t get out of the way entirely.

Before the large man could puzzle through what had happened, James had his wand up, his arm sticking out from the cloak’s sheltering folds as he hissed a quiet but forceful _“Stupify!”  
_  
For just a moment, a bewildered scowl wrinkled the brawny wizard’s heavy brow before the spell hit him in the chest and he toppled backwards, hitting the kitchen floor with a heavy thud and a groan from the floorboards. 

A quick visual sweep of the room showed James that the rest of the kitchen was empty. He was holding his breath though, unwilling to risk even the quiet huff of an exhale in the wake of Knagg’s crash to the ground. Distantly, he heard the muffled, unintelligible sound of voices coming from somewhere above his head. Wilkes and whoever his “guest” was, James guessed, which meant Sirius should be alone in the sitting room.

James reached up to his shoulder and plucked the plump grey rat off. Wormtail squealed a protest. Peter didn’t like being picked up in rat form. He was happy to scamper up his friends’ limbs or ride on them, but he hated it when they picked him up or held him. 

“Change back, Wormy,” James whispered as he set the rat on the ground in front of him. Peter obeyed, but he regained his original form with a pouting glower. James nudged Knaggs with his toe to make certain the man was out. He was large enough that a single stunner wouldn’t keep him down for long.

“I’m going to go find Sirius,” James said. “Obliviate this one and then Ruskin.”

Peter’s eyes went wide and his nose twitched in a ratlike way. “You want _me_ to—”

“Yes, Peter, _you_.” Confidence had always been Peter’s biggest stumbling block. He was good at magic, but most people wouldn’t have guessed it back at school. He could almost fail an exam he knew every answer to because the moment the parchment was in front of him and the pressure was on, he began to doubt his every thought, to second-guess himself at every turn. Even with his friends’ help and encouragement, Peter had never been able to believe in his own talent enough to get his grades much higher than Acceptable. 

The stakes were a lot higher now than N.E.W.T.s or O.W.L.s, and James didn’t have the luxury of coddling Peter’s fragile self-confidence.

“Just do it, Pete, we need to get out of here fast—Wait…where the fuck did Ruskin go?”

James had completely lost track of the pot-bellied wizard while dealing with Knaggs and Peter. “Fuck,” he hissed again and used the curse to cast out a demanding thought asking where Ruskin was and what he was doing?

It was becoming easier and easier to use the Imperius Curse every time James issued Ruskin a new order. He didn’t even feel the need to send his commands in fully formed thoughts, even a vague sense of his wants was enough for the curse to make Ruskin respond. 

It scared the piss out of James how fast he was getting used to this. How easy it was becoming. How bloody _useful_ and convenient it was. 

He was definitely going to have a breakdown after this was all over.

The curse wasn’t exactly a two-way street though. James was in command and Ruskin had no ability to answer his questions silently. Instead, Ruskin spoke his answer aloud from out in the hall. It was quiet enough that James missed the first part of what he said, but there was no mistaking the words that followed.

“He’s out here.”

 _“Shite!_ Take care of this, Peter!” He scrambled over Knagg’s fallen form, tugging the cloak into place as he rushed out of the kitchen. The hallway was dark, Ruskin standing about halfway down near another half open door, dim light shining out to illuminate half of his blank expression. Beyond him, at the far end of the hall, was another figure, mostly hidden in the shadows, but James would know his best friend anywhere. 

Sirius took a step back and all the words that had been on the tip of James’s tongue, the things he had been thinking all went blank. Bruises and blood, both dried and fresh, covered Sirius’s skin. His right arm hung limp and twisted at his side, and there was a look of feral panic in his one unswollen eye that made James want to march upstairs and pummel Wilkes into a puddle of jelly.

Despite it all, the wounds and the terror, and that he looked like he could barely stand, Sirius’s teeth were still bared in a silent snarl that would have fit perfectly on Padfoot. A familiar penknife was clutched hi his good hand, raised almost like a wand.

“You don’t want to go out that way,” Ruskin said, rattling James out of his shock. Right as Sirius threw the penknife. The knife flew wide, hitting the wall handle first and falling to the floor. Still, it made James and Ruskin both flinch, which gave Sirius the split second he needed to reach for the front door. 

The door Ruskin said was hexed.

“Sirius, _don’t!_ ” James hissed as loud as he dared, but it was too late. Sirius’s fingers made contact with the door knob just as James shoved past Ruskin.

The next thing he knew, Sirius was flying backwards, landing halfway down the hallways with a crash that shook the floorboards and seemed to make the entire house groan. 

The men on the first floor heard. The distantly familiar voice of Marcus Wilkes yelled, “What in Merlin’s name!”

A door opened upstairs and the floorboards creaked beneath hurried feet. 

On the ground Sirius stirred feebly. 

The cloak billowed around James as he raced to his best friend’s side. There was fresh blood spilling from a long cut across Sirius’s scalp and from his badly broken nose. The wounds James had barely been able to discern in the dark at a distance were terrible up close. Cuts, bruises, broken bones, burns, and a dangerous pallor to the skin beneath it all. Sirius let out a groan that turned into a couch, bringing up a mouthful of blood that dribbled down his chin as his one good eye fluttering open and closed without seeming to see anything.

He needed a healer. Now.

Still, James didn’t like the thought of running with a wounded Sirius, Wilkes firing curses at their heels. Years of experience pulling pranks served James well in that moment. He had learned to think on his feet, to cover his tracks if he didn’t want to spend every weekend in detentions. And with the invisibility cloak, he could hide them in plain sight until the danger had passed.

Dropping to his knees, James bent over Sirius, pressing a hand against his mouth as Sirius groaned again. He could feel more blood leaking from Sirius’s lips and running through his fingers. The crash course in combat healing James and his friends had received from Caradoc Dearborn made James suspect internal injuries, but he didn’t have time to check or even cast the most basic healing spell. 

“Don’t move, and don’t make a sound,” James hissed in his ear. 

He wasn’t sure if Sirius recognized or understood him, but he obeyed, his eye drooping closed and his ragged breaths hitching and slowing. Not good signs. 

“James…” Sirius whispered when James took his hand away. His voice was little more than a broken croak. More blood spilled out of the corner of his mouth and he shuddered, a tremor passing through his entire body. One of his hands reached up and clutched at James’s shirt. His fingers were cut and bloody and two of them looked broken. His grip was shaking but desperately strong.

“Shhh,” James hissed as he shoved his wand between his teeth, needing both hands as he hauled Sirius up to his feet, sacrificing care for speed as two sets of footsteps thundered down the hall above. Sirius staggered and sagged against James’s chest, a near dead weight. James threw the folds of the invisibility cloak around his friend and pulled him against the wall, letting it take some of Sirius’s weight for a moment.

The footsteps upstairs stopped.

“Ruskin! What was that noise?” Wilkes demanded. He must have seen the older wizard standing blankly at the far end of the hallway. 

James pulled his wand out of his mouth and dug into the connection between himself and Ruskin. _Lie! Tell him an excuse he’ll believe!_

“Accident in the kitchen, sir,” Ruskin said. “A potion backfired, but Knaggs is cleaning it up.” His voice still sounded too flat, too calm. James prayed Wilkes wouldn’t notice. He’d never been the smartest back at school, but they’d obviously underestimated him on some front, judging by the state he’d left Sirius in. 

James twisted his head as far as it would go to catch a glimpse of Wilkes. The former Slytherin was standing on the very top step of the stairs, his wand was out and his narrow, fish-like face was flushed and scowling. Just behind him was another man, one whose bulk dwarfed Wilkes. He remained in the shadows, little more than a silhouette to James’s eyes. Wilkes didn’t want to turn his back on that man, it was obvious from the way he stood, half turned back even as his round eyes flicked along the hallway downstairs. Then his eyes caught and lingering on the door halfway down the hall.

James swiveled to follow his gaze. The door was half open, weak candlelight spilling out into the hallway. From where he stood, James could see an overturned chair and severed ropes on the floor, surrounded by splatters and smears of blood. He had to bite back a litany of curses and oaths because it didn’t take a genius to figure out whose blood that was. James just hoped Wilkes couldn’t see any of it from his vantage.

Wilkes frown uncertainly. His left hand was braced against the stair railing, the sleeve pushed far enough up to display the black skull and snake branded along his forearm. James swallowed, if some of their more recent intelligence was correct, Voldemort’s followers could summon their master by touching the mark. If Wilkes did that they were screwed, James, Sirius, and Peter for sure and possibly the rest of the Order as well.

“I thought I left that door closed,” Wilkes said slowly. 

“I _know_ you did,” Added the man standing behind him. Floorboards groaned as he took a step forward to stand beside Wilkes. He was older, grizzled and greying, but there was something just… _wrong_ about him, about the way he moved and the shape of him still half hidden in shadows. He made a strange, snuffling sort of noise.

“James…” Sirius hissed quietly. James raised a finger and pressed it to Sirius’s lips. They needed to be absolutely still and silent right now. The cloak could barely cover the two of them, if they moved or spoke they risked drawing the Death Eaters’ attention.

“I checked on the prisoner,” Ruskin lied. “He’s out cold.”

“Don’t let that sort of racket happen again,” Wilkes ordered sharply. James held in his sigh of relief as Wilkes turned away, ready to head back to whatever discussion had been taking place upstairs.

“James…” Sirius whispered again. His voice was still trembling, but there was something desperate about the way he said the word. The grip on James’s shirt tightened and tugged sharply to draw his attention. When James looked, his best friend’s good eye was open wide and round with fear. “James…werewolf…”

“Wait,” the voice of the other man upstairs boomed. James watched as he caught Wilkes by the shoulder. Wilkes immediately pulled out of his grip but the other man paid him no more attention, stepping straight up to the banister, sniffing the air as his eyes swept the hallway below.

 _Oh shite!_ James thought as he put two and two together. 

Remus didn’t have much to show for his condition apart from the full moon, but that was because he worked very hard to repress the wolf inside. In their deep research delves into lycanthropy, James, Sirius, and Peter had learned that that wasn’t usually the case. Other werewolves—those who weren’t so fastidious about controlling themselves, who let the wolf dwell closer to the surface—could access some portion of their lycanthropy even when the moon was nowhere near full. 

That included sharper senses, particularly smell.

“I smell something—someone else is here!” The werewolf shouted.

 _Go, go, go!_

James threw Sirius’s unbroken arm over his shoulders and dragged them both away from the wall, knowing he was risking being seen with every step, but they needed to get out of there, needed to get past the wards and Disapparate, right bloody now!

Wilkes was shouting and Ruskin was shouting back, swearing there was no one else in the house, but thundering steps were already rushing down the stairs. Sirius did his best to take some of his own weight and run, but James were practically carrying him as they shouldered open the kitchen door. 

Peter jumped as the door seemed to open by itself, taking half a moment before he realized what had happened. Knaggs was on the floor by his feet, groggy and groaning but slowly coming to.

“Run, Wormtail!” James hissed as he shoved Sirius up against the wall to turn back down the hall. There was one final thing he couldn’t leave without doing.

 _“Obliviate!”_ James yelled. It wasn’t the neat, precise memory charm James had planned if he’d had the time to properly remove and edit Ruskin’s memories. This was pure, brute magical force. It had likely stripped away far more than Ruskin’s memories of that evening. For all James knew he could have just stolen years from the man. Another sin there was no time to dwell on.

The pale green light of the spell hit Ruskin in the chest so hard it knocked him back, straight into the path of the furious werewolf charging down the hallway. James took advantage of their tangle to shoot off a stunning spell that hit the werewolf’s shoulder, staggering him further, but not taking him down.

 _“Avada Kedavra!”_ Wilkes shouted, still standing halfway up the stairs. He was shooting blindly and the spell hit the wall a good five feet away from the doorway where James stood. The green light—so much brighter than that of the memory charm—caused a small explosion as it hit the wall. Plaster and wood splinters shot out in all directions, and James used the cover to better his hold on Sirius and run.

Together, James and Sirius were awkward and slow, tripping over each other’s feet, flashes of their bodies exposed as the cloak shifted and billowed behind them. Sirius was on the verge of collapse with every step. James could hear the wheezy rattle of Sirius’s breaths, none of them sounding strong enough to get oxygen down to his lungs. Sirius’s teeth were bared in a fierce grimace of pain and determination though, and he gave it his all to get out of the kitchen as doors and furniture crashed behind them.

Peter was waiting just on the other side of the wards, wand drawn, body shaking.

“Go!” James yelled. Peter didn’t hesitate to obey. He turned on his heel and vanished with a crack.

The wards pulled at James’s skin, feeling sticky, almost like they were thickening around him. He pushed harder, dragging Sirius’s half limp form just…one…more…step…

It was more of a fall than a pivot, but it was enough. With his arm wrapped tightly around Sirius, James Apparated them back to headquarters mere seconds before Wilkes’s werewolf could reach them.

James hit the ground hard enough to knock his glasses clear off his face. Sirius gave a cry of pain as he landed right beside James at the edge of the wheat field. 

“Fuck!” James shouted. Frustration, adrenaline and dizzying relief all poured into that one expletive as he screamed it into the night. He silently cast a charm as he raised his wand and pushed himself onto his knees and by the light, began searching for his glasses.

Next to him, Sirius groaned and flopped onto his back. 

“Sirius…mate,” James said as he dug through the flattened wheat for his blasted glasses, cursing the fact that he was so blind Sirius was barely more than a blur even this close. “You’re safe, you’re safe.”

There was no reply.

“Peter!” James screamed. Where the hell had Peter landed? James needed him. Sirius needed him. Right fucking now.

Sirius made a strange noise that was halfway between a gurgle and a gag, wet and terrible sounding, just as James’s found his glasses with his knee. Glass crunched, and when he grabbed them up one lens was cracked and the frames were badly bent, but James shoved them on all the same and scrambled to Sirius’s side. 

His eyes were closed and his body convulsing. Blood was running from his mouth and nose and a dozen other wounds, but the worst of it was suddenly coming from his right leg. Sirius’s torn jeans were drenched in it, and more was gushing from a spot just above his knee where a chunk of flesh and pants looked to have simply vanished.

Splinched. James realized with horror. He’d Apparated badly and splinched his already wounded friend!

“Help!” James screamed. He pressed the heel of his hand directly into the wound, hoping to slow the rapid spurt of blood. It wouldn’t work though, James knew it. They were too far away for anyone in the farmhouse to hear him, especially through the wards.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” James closed his eyes and tried not to think about Sirius bleeding out right beside him. He tried to summon a better memory, the happiest he could find.

_Laughing, Sirius threw one arm around James’s shoulders, and the other around Lily’s. Lily looked stunning in her wedding dress, cheeks flushed with excitement and more than a little champagne at that point. “I’m so happy for the two of you,” Sirius said. “You’re going to spectacularly strange babies with wild ginger hair, and I’m going to spoil the piss out of them.”_

__The silver stag burst out of James’s wand tip and was leaping toward the farmhouse in an instant.

James’s attention fixed back on Sirius. He dredged up every healing spell he knew, repeating them one after the other, knowing it wouldn’t be enough, that he’d always been shite at healing anything worse than a broken nose or a sprained wrist. 

He knew it would do little good, would accomplish nothing more than his Patronus was already racing to do, but as James knelt amidst the broken wheat stalks, trying to keep his best friend alive, he screamed for help, over and over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anyone starts wondering, Peter didn't do anything evil or sketchy while left alone. As I'm writing things he hasn't yet started spying. I have very specific headcanons on when, why, and how he began to turn. I don't know if they'll wind up as part of another story or maybe just a short drabble somewhere in between other things, but it hasn't happened yet.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and, as always, reviews and kudos warm the cockles of my shriveled heart.


	12. Childhood's End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery processes begin rather badly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure I really like all of this chapter, but here it is. The end is in sight. One final chapter to go after this.

James’s hands were covered in blood. It reached up past his wrist, almost halfway to his elbows. The sleeves of his shirt were stained with it and were drying crusted to his arms like cotton scabs. It was under his fingernails so deep he would probably make his cuticles bleed trying to scrub it away. His hands were passing from sticky to tacky as the blood dried in the whorls of his fingertips and the lines of his palms. 

There was a sink in the bathroom down the hall. There was another even closer to him in the kitchen, but James couldn’t go in there. He would only be in the way. Instead he stayed sitting on the edge of the old sofa in the sitting room, staring at his hands and listening to what was happening in the kitchen.

Lily and Caradoc weren’t shouting anymore. James took that as a good sign. When they’d first hauled Sirius up onto the kitchen table, Caradoc, the Order’s only professional healer, and Lily, one of their best non-professional healers, had been screaming at the top of their lungs at each other, and at Sturgis, who’d been roped into acting as their assistant. 

Worthless as he was at healing spells and half shell shocked, James had been banished from the kitchen alongside a hyperventilating Peter. They’d ostensibly been given the task of watching over Dorcas Meadowes, who was in one of the bedrooms down the hall recovering from the effects of a nasty curse. Peter had diligently gone off to do his duty, glad to have something to do. James, on the other hand, had parked himself in the sitting room and kept his attention steadfastly fixed on the kitchen doorway.

He couldn’t see the table from where he sat, but he could see Lily, Caradoc, and Sturgis when they rushed around that side of the kitchen. James listened to every word they’d said, every spell they cast, every direction or curse or exclamation they made as they worked to save his best friend’s life. He understood precious little of it, but he listened intently all the same.

Sirius had stopped breathing by the time three figures had come crashing through the fields to James’s side, guided by his Patronus. Moody had let out a long string of curses while Caradoc and Lily had shoved James out of the way and got to work immediately. 

Caradoc had done some spell that got Sirius breathing again while Lily transfigured a broken stalk of wheat into a long strip of cloth she’d wound around Sirius’s upper thigh. She’d stuck her wand through the knot and twisted it, tightening the tourniquet with every turn to stop the blood still spurting from the splinched wound. 

Moody had nearly blasted Peter to pieces as he came running toward them. He’d been in such a panic that he’d accidentally Apparated to the opposite side of the fields. After confirming James and Peter’s identities, Moody had stomped off to check the perimeters and make sure they hadn’t been followed by anyone, though not before he’d promised James they would be having words later on. 

Things got a little blurry after that. James was sure that he and Peter had helped levitate Sirius back to the house so Lily and Caradoc could keep working. He remembered Sturgis sweeping everything off the kitchen table and Sirius lying limp on the scrubbed oak. He’d looked so much worse in proper light. 

James had seen corpses before, seen the aftermath of Death Eater attacks, but he’d never seen a living person look so much like a corpse. He knew he’d pleaded with Lily, begged her to make sure Sirius was still breathing. He was, she’d promised him. Caradoc had used his wand to slice through Sirius’s jeans and jacket, destroying the latter. Sirius would be pissed about that, James had thought numbly.

Rolls of parchment and Sirius’s broken wand had spilled out of his torn jacket and across the table and floor. Sturgis had paused to gather the papers up and stow them away. Peter had picked up the broken halves of Sirius’s ebony wand and clutched them close, as though there might be some impossible chance of fixing it.

It was the sight of Sirius’s bare torso as Caradoc peeled his jacked and t-shirt away that had gotten James kicked out of the room. He remembered the deep purple, almost black bruising, the swelling of Sirius’s abdomen. It was so unnatural, so much worse than the handful of visible cuts and burns should have caused. _Bad internal bleeding_ , someone, maybe Lily, had said. He would need blood replenishing potions, but not before they could figure out where the bleeding was coming from. James had tried to rush forward, desperate to do something, to help, but he’d nearly tripped Sturgis and a potion bottle had shattered somewhere in the mess. 

Then Lily’s hands had been on his shoulders, shoving him toward the sitting room. “Go, James,” she’d ordered. “We’ll do everything we can. Just keep watch on Dorcas, will you?”

Dorcas had been wounded in a battle somewhere up in Scotland. Benjy Fenwick had been too, but he’d been well enough off for Fabian to take him home. Gideon and Marlene were still up in Scotland helping to cover the whole thing up from Muggles. James didn’t have all the details. His mind didn’t have room for them right now.

It had been a shite night for the Order all around though.

“James…”

He blinked and focused as fingers reached forward to take his bloody hands without hesitation. Lily’s hands were covered in blood too.

“James, it’s going to be all right.” 

He let the soothing sound of his wife’s voice sink into his skin. It took a few seconds for her words to make sense. When he’d puzzled them out though he finally looked up from his hands to her.

Lily was crouched before him. She was exhausted and pale with red, bruised looking eyes, her hair frizzy and soaked with sweat. Her clothes were stained with blood and potions. This one night seemed to have aged her fifteen years. 

She was the most beautiful thing James had ever seen.

“He’ll live?” James croaked.

Tears glistened in Lily’s eyes as she nodded. 

“He will. It…it was bad, and it’ll take some time for him to heal fully, but Sirius will be all right.” 

James let out a long breath that was more than half a sob. Lily leaned forward until her forehead bumped lightly against his. They rested like that, the exhaustion catching up to them both, for several long minutes. 

Then Alastor Moody stomped into the room and his small, dark eyes fixed instantly on James. 

“Dearborn tells me Black’ll live,” he growled. Lily nodded and Moody returned the gesture stiffly. “Good. I hate digging my funeral robes out of mothballs.” 

He crossed the room and stopped several paces in front of James and Lily, squinting as he looked them both up and down. His gaze was reminiscent of Dumbledore’s in some ways, piercing, like he could see straight through a person. However, Dumbledore’s bright blue eyes always seemed like they were gently peering into your soul and seeing the best of you, while Moody’s glare felt like it could pick out ever sin a person had ever committed and judged them for each and every one.

James wilted under that damning gaze, just as guilty as many of the criminals Moody had locked away over the years. Lily must have sensed something of his shame. Without letting go of James’s hands, she moved so she was sitting on the sofa next to her husband, a united front against the Auror standing before them. 

“I’ll need to talk to Black as soon as possible,” Moody said. “We need to know how he was captured and if he revealed anything.”

While James would deny his own failings tonight, he wasn’t about to let Moody or anyone else imply Sirius might have sold them out. He bristled and lifted his head, meeting Moody’s hard eyes full on. 

“Sirius would never betray the Order. He would die first. He almost _did_ die!” James snapped. 

Moody didn’t argue with him, just gave a skeptical grunt.

“Sirius is sleeping right now, Moody, and he needs to _stay_ asleep until morning at the very least.” Lily said firmly. “He lost a lot of blood, and the internal damage was bad, not to mention the—” She seemed to realize she was beginning to ramble, her voice cracking as she recounted the damage she’d had to help diagnose and heal. Lily stopped herself and shook her head. James didn’t need to hear that right now. 

“Morning then,” Moody agreed grudgingly. “You and I need to have a conversation of our own anyway, Potter.”

James nodded. He was starting to feel numb, inside and out. Best to get this out of the way now. He’d made his choices, and Sirius was alive, so he couldn’t regret them. Not entirely. 

“Should I get Pettigrew in here?” Moody asked. He groaned as he lowered himself into an armchair across from James. His joints popped and James had the sudden realization that not all the lines on Moody’s face were scars, and the grey in his hair was more likely to have come from age rather than trauma. He’d never thought of Moody as old before. Hell, he’d barely thought of Moody as human, more like some sort of crime-busting golem, immortal and invincible. 

None of them were invincible though, or immortal. James had never been more aware of that in his life.

“No,” James said firmly. “Anything Peter did tonight he did under my direction.” James had made the plans, James had cast the curses. He would take any consequences that came with them.

Moody nodded. “I’ll give you one thing, Potter, you’ve got a pair of bollocks on you. Too bad you don’t have a brain to go with them.”

James clenched his jaw and took the reprimand silently. It was Lily who opened her mouth to fight back on her husband’s behalf, but James squeezed her hand and shook his head.

“You disobeyed my direct orders, Potter,” Moody growled.

“I did.”

“Orders I gave you _twice_. You were not supposed to engage.”

“I know.”

Moody shook his head and squinted suspiciously. He’d obviously been expecting more of a fight, maybe for James to shout and throw things like he’d done during their earlier row. 

“Give your report then,” Moody snapped. “Tell me what happened and why you decided you suddenly knew better than all of our procedures.”

James cleared his throat. Lily shifted closer to him, her shoulder pressed against his, a steady pillar of strength he couldn’t help but lean against. A part of him wanted to send her away. He didn’t want her to know what he’d done, but he was weak and he needed her by his side. He wouldn’t lie to her either, would never keep secrets from her. Better that she learn the truth now than force him to dredge up the story again later.

“A few minutes after I sent Peter back to tell you about the warded site we’d found, a man stepped out through the wards. He was smoking one of Sirius’s cigarettes, and I…I stunned him. Didn’t even think about it at the time, but after I’d pulled him beneath the cloak and retreated to an empty house across the street I figured he would be useful, that I could learn if Sirius was there, if he was alive, what to expect inside, how to get past the wards.”

“You interrogated the prisoner?” Moody asked. “You’re not trained in interrogation.”

“I know.”

“Well, what did you learn?” Moody asked, gruff distain in his voice.

“His name was Absalom Ruskin, and he was one of the caretakers for the safe house behind the wards. He told me Sirius was alive, that he was hurt. He said he hadn’t done it, that it was Marcus Wilkes who’d been—who’d been torturing Sirius.” He swallowed. His mouth and throat felt suddenly, horribly dry. All the moisture seemed to have migrated up to James’s eyes where he blinked back tears. 

Moody’s small eyes sparked with interest. A name—two names. Even if James had cocked up everything else tonight he’d at least given Moody _something_ concrete. 

“Marcus Wilkes?” Lily asked. _“We went to school with him!”_ She sounded more surprised and outraged than James would have thought. Wishful thinking perhaps, after all, she’d believed the best of Snape for years, why not give others the benefit of the doubt as well.

James nodded. “I saw him, saw the Dark Mark on his arm. Ruskin didn’t have one, neither did the other bloke who ran the safe house—Knaggs I think his name was. They were just grunts, but Wilkes is the real thing now.”

“And what methods did you use to get this information?” Moody asked, dragging them back on topic.

There it was. 

James pulled his hand out of Lily’s. She’d been holding his wand hand, and he suddenly fancied he could feel the phantom tingle of the Imperius curse still extending through it. “I—I started by threatening him. That was all it took for him to give me most of what he knew. I had him unarmed and tied up, and he wasn’t particularly brave or loyal.”

Moody’s knowing eyes didn’t blink as they bored into James. “And when you asked the questions he refused to answer?”

“I was going to wait,” James said, forcing himself to meet Moody’s piercing gaze. “I thought you would come back with Peter. I thought _you_ would know what to do next.”

“You mean you were hoping I could pull you out of the pit you’d dug yourself into?” Moody growled.

“Yes,” James said. He didn’t have the heart to take offense at Moody’s jab. It was too true.

“And when Pettigrew came back alone and told you to stick to observing only?”

James shrugged. “It was too late for that. Someone was going to notice Ruskin was missing soon.”

“You could have modified his memory and sent him back,” Moody pointed out.

“No, I couldn’t have,” James said firmly. “There was a Death Eater with a schoolyard grudge _torturing_ the man I consider to be my brother…” James swallowed and then lifted his head, squaring his jaw. “I’d do it again. To save Sirius, to save any of my friends, anyone in the Order, I’d do it all again.”

He looked away from Moody, his eyes finding Lily. What he said next he needed to say to her. She met his eyes levelly, and James realized that she already knew. Not the details, but the shape of things. 

“You did what you had to do to save a life,” Lily said fiercely. She reached out and took hold of his hand again, squeezing it tight enough to hurt, tight enough to let him know she wasn’t going to let him go. 

James had never felt anything so comforting. He wanted to sob in relief and sorrow. He’d been so worried that Lily would turn away from him when she learned what he’d done, that she would look at him with horror or disgust. He was relieved beyond measure that she did none of those things, but it still broke his heart that he’d put her in this position, that she had to defend him against a crime he’d knowingly committed.

He'd worked so hard to become a better man, in large part so he could be worthy of Lily Evans. Now it felt like he was dragging her down with him to depths far below his days as a teenage bully. 

“When Ruskin refused to get me past the protection spells around the safe house I used an Imperius curse on him,” James confessed. Lily needed to know, to hear it from his lips.

Her emerald green eyes stayed fixed on him, not even blinking. There was a tightness around her lips though. Without words she managed to convey a litany with the barest hint of an expression. James could read pity there, and, yes, some anger and disappointment as well, but beneath it was something fierce and unyielding. 

Sometimes James wondered how her Patronus was ever a doe, because Lily was every inch a lioness beneath the skin. She lifted her lip just a fraction. It was not a smile, it was her baring a sliver of teeth. Teeth she would not hesitate to get bloody defending her pride—her family. Would she have done the same thing if she’d been in his position? James hoped they never had to find out.

Moody made a small noise that James couldn’t interpret, but it drew his attention away from Lily. The Auror was sitting back in his chair. Silence crackled like lightning in the air between the three of them, Lily steadfast and protective, James ashamed yet defiant, and Moody…inscrutable…

“I’d like a few words alone with your husband, Mrs. Potter,” Moody said, breaking the tense quiet.

“No,” Lily replied flatly. James leaned forward though and kissed her sweat and tear stained cheek.

“It’s all right, Lils,” James said quietly. He managed a tired little half smile for her. He was good at that, at smiling and laughing even when he didn’t feel the slightest bit happy. Lily knew him too well to fall for it, but when he didn’t back down she sighed and leaned in close, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you too,” James replied. He’d never in his life said anything more sincere than those words. 

Lily let go of him reluctantly and shot Moody a vicious glare that promised there would be hell to pay if anything happened to her husband in her absence. “I’m going to help Caradoc move Sirius to one of the upstairs bedrooms,” she said. “Come find me when you’re done down here, James.” She made it an order rather than a request or a question.

“I will,” James promised. 

She headed for the kitchen, leaving the door between it and the sitting room open. However, Moody slammed it shut behind her with a flick of his wand. Oh, she was going to be pissed at that, James thought with a wince.

He had to bite back another wince as he turned his attention to Moody again. The Auror leaned back into his chair. His hand inattentively rubbing at his knee as if it pained him.

“Did you know,” Moody said slowly, every word slow and deliberate. “That the Ministry of Magic is considering a special provision to allow Aurors to use Unforgiveable curses against Death Eaters?”

“As you’ve pointed out many times before, I’m not an Auror,” James replied, wary and uncertain of what Moody was getting at.

“No, you’re not.” Moody said sharply. He was silent for another long minute. The hand that had been on his knee rose to his chin, scratching thoughtfully at an old scar. “You’re not an Auror, and we don’t work for the Ministry here. In fact, this little group we’re all part of is illegal in and of itself, so I can hardly haul you in front of the Wizengamot, now can I?”

James’s head shot up, his mouth gaping open in shock. “You’re not going to—”

“Drag you off to Azkaban?” Moody scoffed. “Under most circumstances, yes. I don’t like the idea of giving Aurors or anyone else permission to cast Unforgiveable curses. These are dark times though, as Dumbledore keeps telling us, and you’re no good to anyone sitting on your arse in a prison cell. Not to mention the fact that your wife and friends would probably stage a prison break to get you out. That lot might even manage it.” 

Moody shook his head and sighed heavily. “I was just about your age when Grindelwald was making a mess of things over on the continent, you know. Never thought I’d look back fondly on those times. He was a right piece of work, Grindelwald, but I’d take half a dozen of him over what we’re facing now. Grindelwald had a cause and a code—despicable though they were—and there were some lines he wouldn’t cross even at his worst. Can’t say the same about Voldemort though, can we?”

Now it was James shaking his head. He couldn’t believe this, couldn’t fathom that he was wasn’t being clapped in irons and punished. It was too good to be true…and so, so wrong. “No,” he said. “No, Moody, I—”

“Did something terrible.” Moody finished for him. “There’s more than one reason they call them ‘Unforgiveable Curses,’ Potter. Something tells me you’re going to have a hard time forgiving yourself for what happened tonight. Besides, you’re not getting off entirely. Until I say otherwise you’re attached to me like a babe on a tit. You won’t go on a single mission, you’ll barely scratch your arse without my leave. Understood?” 

James gave him a slow nod, still reeling and uncertain of Moody’s intentions. The Auror grunted in return. “Minerva McGonagall warned me about you, you know,” he said. “Your entire little gang, really, but _you_ especially, Potter. Said you had great heaps of potential, that you could be one hell of a leader, but that you have problems following rules and listening to authority. That’s fine and dandy when you’re causing mischief at Hogwarts, but we’re not playing games anymore, are we, Potter?”

Images of Wilkes with his Dark Mark, of Sirius’s bloody, broken body rose up in James’s mind. “No, sir, we’re not.”

*

Waking was a slow process; one Sirius wanted no part of. He’d been dreaming again, this time of laying in the grass with Remus along the edge of the Black Lake, sunshine on their skin and Remus’s head pillowed on his shoulder. It was a good dream, far better than whatever was waiting for him in the real world. However, whether Sirius wanted it or not, he was being drawn back to the waking world bit by bit.

Pain potions. He must be on some sort of pain potions. Nothing else could ever produce the same heavy feeling in his limbs, the sensation that his very blood had turned to something thick and treacly, and his brain was nothing but a pile of mushy peas. Strangely enough, the potions also made him hungry.

At first, he couldn’t even open his eyes or truly feel his body, but he could hear the hushed mumble of voices. 

James.

One of them was _James_.

His friend’s voice tugged at something in Sirius’s jumbled mind. Memories came oozing back as he lingered at the edge of consciousness. They were out of order and full of holes, difficult to separate from his dreams and nightmares under the potions’ effects. There were things lurking right beneath the surface of his mind that Sirius wasn’t sure he wanted to investigate—a derelict house, a chair, and a leering face. James had been there, and Peter too. They’d come for him, hadn’t they? That hadn’t been another dream. Please, Morgana, let it not have been a dream.

Every inch of his body felt impossibly heavy and disconnected, but Sirius mustered his strength and will and opened his damned eyes.

Only one eye obeyed, blinking open only to squeeze shut after an instant. Bright light stabbed through his eyelid and seemed to awaken the nerves across his body.

Pain worked its way through whatever potions were in Sirius’s system as he lay there, listening to familiar voices speak words he couldn’t quite understand. It started distant and vague, like an itch more than anything else. Slowly, the pain grew into a pervasive ache that sharpened into agony. Every shallow breath burned through his chest and throat alike. The arm he’d broken throbbed in time to the beat of his heart, and he felt like thigs were moving and shifting inside his abdomen. What scared him the most though, was that he couldn’t feel his right leg at all. Steeling himself, Sirius opened his good eye again.

The light was still bright, but not unbearably so now that he was expecting it. It was sunlight streaming in from a large window somewhere out of his field of vision. More than could ever have made it through the boards covering the broken window in the rundown house where he’d been held. The lilac pain on the walls was old and faded, but it lacked the rot of the Death Eater safe house as well. 

He must have made some sound, some noise or sigh that slipped past his split lips, because the murmuring voices fell silent. 

“Sirius?” James’s voice called. “Can you hear me, Padfoot?”

He tried to speak, but no words came out. Still, they took it as a good sign that he even tried.

“Oh, thank Merlin!” Peter squeaked.

Sirius blinked his good eye, and when he opened it again he found James, Lily, and Peter all crowded above him, hovering. They all looked exhausted beneath their relieved smiles.

Lily disappeared from his line of sight for a moment, only to reappear with a goblet full of water. “Can you drink, Sirius?” She asked softly.

Merlin’s pants, he hoped he could. Sirius’s mouth and throat felt drier than a desert. He sipped slowly when Lily lifted the goblet to his lips, the water soothing and burning in equal measures as it went down his raw throat. As he drank, his friends talked, babbled really, speaking over each other, most of their words lost in translation to his muzzy brain anyway.

It was comforting though, just to hear the voices of the people he loved, to know they were there, that he was safe again. There was something missing though, something important, something...no, some _one—_

__“Remus!” Sirius called, his voice cracking on his boyfriend’s name. He struggled to move, to sit up as Remus didn’t come, didn’t appear beside him. Gentle hands held him, pressed him back down to the pillows and the mattress, he heard Lily tell Peter to grab another calming draught from the table.

Sirius’s fingers, several of them still wrapped in bandages or splinted grasped feebly at James’s shirt sleeve. “Prongs, please…where’s Remus?” He begged.

James flinched and looked away from him. It was Peter who answered as he returned with a potion bottle for Lily. “He’s not here, Padfoot,” Peter said quietly. “He’s still on his mission. We tried to get Dumbledore to contact him, to pull him out, but he says Remus is safe, that he’ll be back tomorrow.” Even Sirius’s befuddled senses couldn’t miss the hint of bitterness in his friend’s voice.

Remus wasn’t here. He was still out on the mysterious mission he’d refused to tell Sirius about. Breathing became too painful, so Sirius stopped it entirely. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t think of anything beyond the fact that the man he loved was possibly in danger. Memories came rushing back, only now in his mind it was _Remus_ tied to a chair, screaming as curses hit him—

“Fuck!” Lily swore as Sirius shuddered and wheezed breathlessly. “He’s panicking. James, keep him still.”

She yanked the stopper from the potion bottle with her teeth and moved close to Sirius as James held him by the shoulders. “It’s going to be all right, Padfoot, I promise, I promise,” James repeated the words over and over again, a desperate mantra. 

Sirius tried to bat them away, but he lacked the strength for more than a token resistance as Lily poured the potion between his swollen lips. He sputtered and choked, but enough of it got down his throat, its effects almost instantaneous.

He slid back into sleep with Remus’s name on his lips, echoing down into the darkness as it embraced him.


	13. While You Were Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus returns from his mission to find he’s missed quite a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy heck, guys! This is it. This is the last chapter. I finished my first multi-chapter fic! I hope you enjoy, and please check out the end notes for some news about what's next if you enjoyed this story.

Remus staggered a step when he Apparated at the edge of the overgrown field. He was exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally, and he was so, so glad to be almost home. 

In the pocket of his robes were the fruits of his mission, a list of names, places, and a few other things Remus thought were relevant enough to write down. It was a short list, and Remus had come away from his mission feeling like he’d worked very hard to accomplish very little. He’d been able to make contact with a few werewolves, following rumors that Voldemort was looking to recruit them into his ranks. However, the werewolves he’d spoken to were suspicious of outsiders, and most of them were as innocent and ignorant as the rest of the public. The few who did seem to know something hadn’t been eager to divulge their secrets to an overcurious stranger. So, the information Remus was bringing back hardly amounted to anything more than a few rumors and anxious fears spoken in whispers. 

There was a part of Remus that was glad he’d failed. He’d accepted this mission reluctantly. Only his lingering gratitude toward Dumbledore and his trust in the man’s leadership had made him agree. Remus had spent his life trying to avoid other werewolves and suppressing those parts of himself as much as possible. Seeking out both had been a painful process he hoped he would not have to repeat. 

That was why he hadn’t told Sirius what he was doing. 

Dumbledore had kept his mission secret from the Order as a whole because most of them still didn’t know Remus’s secret, but the headmaster had made no stipulations against telling his friends. That had been Remus’s idea, his lie. It had been hard enough to make Sirius accept that he was going on a mission alone. If his boyfriend had known it was a mission that would strike so close to Remus’s deepest fears and self-loathing, he would have tied Remus to the bed rather than let him go. James, Peter, and Lily would have provided the rope if Remus tried to tell any of them instead. 

They were overprotective of him, the lot of them. It made him smile to think about it though, the depth of their friendship, their love. Once, he’d thought it would be impossible for people to ever care for him like that. Remus wondered how much groveling he was going to have to do when he eventually did tell his friends what he’d been up to. Sirius would throw a fit for certain.

As he trudged toward the farmhouse, Remus ran over a mental list he’d been putting together over the past three days. In no particular order, he wanted a hot shower, greasy food, his own bed, and Sirius pressed tight against him. He even began to consider ways he could combine those desires to get them all as soon as possible. Eating food in bed, or showering with Sirius perhaps…

Remus made it all the way through the wards imagining different scenarios. He’d just stepped through the garden gate when the front door of the farmhouse was wrenched open. Frank Longbottom stuck his head and wand through the gap, eyes going wide.

“Remus! Oh, thank Merlin you’re all right!” Frank seemed ready to rush out the door and hug Remus before he caught himself.

“A little tired, but otherwise fine,” Remus replied with a smile. When Frank’s expression of relief shifted into a worried frown, Remus felt himself tense.

“Everything all right, Frank?” Remus asked cautiously.

“Did you come straight here after your mission?” Frank asked. “You haven’t been home yet?”

Something really was wrong. Something at home. 

_Sirius._

Remus felt like his chest was cracking open and someone was wrenching at his heart and lungs.

“Frank, what’s wrong? What happened? Sirius—” He couldn’t bring himself to find a way to finish that sentence, that question.

“He’s alive!” Frank said hastily. “Caradoc says he’ll be fine with rest and time—”

Frank’s lips kept moving, but Remus couldn’t hear a word he was saying. Something had happened to Sirius. He was hurt. Remus made for the front door, ready to shove past Frank and get to the Floo, get home, get to Sirius. 

He was met with the tip of Frank’s wand instead, halting him in his tracks just before it jabbed him in the eye.

“Let me through, Frank. I need to go!” Remus demanded, not even caring that his voice had come out almost as a growl. Frank’s eyes widened, but he held firm.

“You know I can’t, Remus. Protocol. I—”

“Oh, fuck protocol!” Called a voice from behind Frank. Alice shouldered her way past her husband. “Answer a security question and we’ll call it good, Remus.”

He nodded eagerly, trying to calm the wolf raging just below his skin. Never had Remus been so tempted to give in to its instincts so far from the full moon. 

“What game could you never beat me at in school?” Alice asked. It was a terrible question as far as security went. Remus didn’t care.

“Exploding Snap,” he answered, already shoving past them. 

“What happened?” Remus asked as he hurried toward the fireplace, Frank and Alice following on his heels. 

“Not entirely sure,” Alice answered. “There was more to Sirius’s mission than anyone thought, and someone got the jump on him. Remus—” She grabbed him by the shoulders to stop him for a moment. Remus snarled at her, honestly snarled, but Alice didn’t flinch. “He got hurt, but he’ll be all right. Remember that: he’ll be all right.”

Remus couldn’t even bring himself to nod. Her words echoed through his head, the phrase “he got hurt” amplified above all the rest. Shaking himself loose, Remus grabbed a fistful of Floo Powder and tossed it into the flames, giving the address of the Camden flat he shared with Sirius.

Usually, Floo travel gave Remus no trouble, unlike James, who had managed to lose three pairs of glasses to strange fireplaces over the years. Right now though, his mind was reeling and his body felt numb. Thankfully, he still managed to arrive at the correct destination, though he tumbled out of the flat’s cramped fireplace straight onto the rug, banging a shoulder and knee on the way down.

The figure dozing in the armchair near the fire gave a startled yelp and scrambled to his feet.

“Sirius!” Remus called, his voice barely making it past the tight, strangling sensation in his throat.

The man in the chair wasn’t Sirius though, and after a second Remus wondered how he could ever have, even for an instant, believed it was. Wishful thinking, he supposed as Peter helped Remus right himself.

“Thank Circe you’re back!” Peter said, throwing his arms around Remus in a desperate hug as soon as the werewolf was back on his feet. “We were so worried! Dumbledore said you were fine but we couldn’t contact you and everything else has gone so wrong over the past few days and—”

“Wormtail! Where’s Sirius?” Remus demanded, grabbing his friend by the shoulders tight enough to make Peter wince.

“In—in bed,” Peter stammered. “He’s sleeping, has been for most of the day and—”

Remus didn’t stick around to let Peter finish. He nearly shoved the smaller man out of the way as he raced toward the bedroom he and Sirius shared. The door was cracked open and dark inside, but light spilling in from the hallway was enough for Remus to see the man he loved sound asleep in their bed.

He froze in the doorway, not daring to breathe as he watched the slow rise and fall of Sirius’s bare chest. The first shock of relief— _He was alive!¬_ —quickly gave way to a volatile mix of fury and distress as Remus registered the state his boyfriend was in.

Sirius was curled on his side, not an unusual way for him to sleep, especially if Remus was there to curl around him. The quilt and bedsheets had been pushed down to his hips, exposing a rainbow of bruises and bandages across his chest and arms. One of Sirius’s eyes was blackened and puffy, and dozens of cuts, burns, and welts littered his exposed skin. Three of his fingers appeared to be splinted and bandaged.

Remus wanted to rush to him, to pull Sirius into his arms and never let him go again, but he didn’t dare move. He was terrified to even touch Sirius for fear of causing him additional pain.

“Why hasn’t anyone healed him?” Remus sobbed. The spells for mending bruises and cuts and broken fingers were all simple. Anyone should have been able to do them, so why hadn’t they? He yanked out his own wand and took a step forward, determined to do it himself.

Peter caught him around the wrist, though Remus’s desperate strength nearly knocked the smaller man off his feet when he tried to pull free.

“Wait, Remus, you can’t!” Peter gasped. “Caradoc and Lily _did_ heal him. They took care of all the—all the really bad stuff, but Caradoc says they have to move slowly with the rest.”

“What? Why?” Remus whirled on his friend, who instinctively cringed back. The wolf was showing, Remus knew. He was usually so good at keeping that part of himself at bay, but Sirius was hurt and all bets were off right now. 

“H-he said…” Peter swallowed and glanced back toward the sitting room. Clearly, he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to be the one to deliver this news. “Caradoc said—and Lily agreed—that all the curse damage—especially from one not even Caradoc could identify—did a lot of internal damage. They didn’t want to mix too many spells on Sirius right now, especially with all the potions he has to take. We’ve been healing him bit by bit though. Lily took care of his broken arm this morning, and I fixed his nose a few hours ago.”

Remus flinched as he reluctantly lowered his wand. He’d been in that same position before. Many of his scars were from the smaller, non-life-threatening wounds he accumulated on particularly bad moons. Madame Pomfrey sometimes had to leave his more minor wounds unhealed for days if Remus had major injuries that took precedence. Too much magic, she’d once told Remus, even healing magic, wasn’t good for the body. 

It was especially tricky when the wounds had been caused by dark magic, like a werewolf’s claws, or a dark curse. Peter had mentioned curses, said that curses had been used on Sirius, including one that even a professional healer like Caradoc hadn’t been able to identify. Remus could easily guess what some of the other curses might have been. Merlin and Morgana, this was Sirius’s last summer at Grimmauld Place all over again, only worse. 

“What happened?” Remus asked. He refused to take his eyes off Sirius, afraid that his bruised, bandaged chest might stop rising and falling if Remus looked away for even a second.

“I-I don’t know all the details,” Peter admitted. He lingered in the bedroom doorway as Remus took another shaky-kneed step forward. “He was awake a few times yesterday, but he’s been sleeping most of the time—pain potions and all that. He talked to Dumbledore about it, but Moody kicked us all out of the room for that. That made James pissed, but he’s already in enough trouble with Moody, and—”

Remus scowled, even though Peter couldn’t see it. “What _do_ you know, Wormtail?” He interjected before Peter could ramble off on a string of tangents. It was probably all useful, relevant information, but Remus had very little space to process anything that didn’t directly deal with Sirius right now.

Peter sighed, he really hadn’t wanted to be the one here when Remus got back, but James and Lily had both spent the night at the Camden flat, sleeping in shifts—when they could sleep at all—so there was always someone keeping an eye on Sirius. Peter had gladly taken his shift this morning, but he didn’t want to explain to Remus how Sirius had been tortured. Remus cultivated a careful aura of harmlessness with his gentle voice, quiet wit, and even the clothes he wore, but when that façade slipped…well, Remus could be damn scary when he wanted to be. Especially when it concerned Sirius. There was no getting around it though, so Peter leaned against the doorframe and recounted what he knew. 

He told Remus how Sirius hadn’t returned from his mission when he was supposed to, how he and James gone looking for him, and eventually how they had rescued their friend. Peter was more reluctant to share the details Lily had given them about what had happened to Sirius during his captivity. She’d been able to construct a fairly detailed picture of what had been done to him by the wounds she’d helped Caradoc heal, and it had been bad. 

Remus sagged against the bedside cabinet as Peter described the long day of agony Sirius had lived through. He knew Peter was skirting around the particulars of what Wilkes and Sirius’s other captors had done to him, but for the moment Remus was all right with that. Remus wasn’t sure he could take knowing the full list of torments Sirius had suffered. Not right now. Enough of it was written in bruises and bandages across Sirius’s skin to make him queasy. 

They’d just reached the part of the story where Peter and James had helped Sirius back home to his and Remus’s flat yesterday evening, when a soft voice, barely more than a hoarse whisper interrupted Peter’s narrative.

“Remus…is that you?” Sirius’s voice was shaky and slurred. He lifted his head from the pillow, tangled hair falling in front of his face as he blinked. 

Remus was at his side in a second, ignoring a twinge from his knee as he knelt beside the bed to put himself on Sirius’s level. “It’s me, love. I’m here…I’m right here…”

The need to touch Sirius, to make sure he was really there, overwhelmed Remus. He reached out and gingerly brushed the hair away from Sirius’s face. His fingers skimmed over Sirius’s cheek, avoiding a sticking plaster and the bruise around his eye. Sirius relaxed under his caress, exhaling and settling back down into bed. He was clearly on some powerful pain-relieving potions; not even a bottle of firewhisky could knock Sirius this loopy.

“Was worried…” Sirius mumbled, his eyes closing again. “You’re okay? Please be okay, Moony…love you…worried…”

“I’m fine, Padfoot,” Remus’s voice was thick enough to choke on. He moved his hand to stroke Sirius’s tangled hair. His boyfriend always found that soothing. “I love you too.” 

“Are you two going to be all right if I go?” Peter asked. He was still standing in the bedroom doorway looking awkward, like he knew he was intruding on something private. Remus owed him an apology, Frank and Alice too. He’d behaved rather abominably, though he was sure they all understood why. Still, apologies would be necessary, just not today. He also owed Peter and James something else though, a debt he was sure he could never repay.

Remus looked back over his shoulder. “Thank you, Pete,” he said. “Thank you for saving him, and for staying with him.”

Peter flushed happily from the praise. “It was mostly James,” he muttered humbly.

“It was still bloody brave of you,” Remus assured him. Even if Peter had done nothing but stand there and pick his nose he’d still done more to save Sirius than Remus had. Fuck, Remus hadn’t even known his boyfriend needed rescuing. 

“I’ll stop by Lily and James’s place, let them know you’re home safe,” Peter promised. “With everything that went wrong in the last few days, we were all worried sick about you. Dumbledore kept insisting you were safe though.” 

There was a lot to unpack in those words. What else had gone wrong besides Sirius’s capture? How could Dumbledore have known he was safe since Remus hadn’t contacted the old headmaster during his entire mission? Questions for another day, he told himself. Right now, he needed to focus on Sirius.

Remus thanked Peter again, but his attention was already drifting back to Sirius. Distantly, he heard Peter leave through the Floo, but his eyes were fixed on the injured man in the bed.

Sirius’s breathing was shallow but even, and Remus was convinced he’d fallen asleep again until his eyes fluttered open and a hand with two broken fingers reached out to him. Remus took Sirius’s hand gently in his own and bent over to press a kiss to the knuckles of his unbroken fingers.

“So worried ‘bout you, Remus,” Sirius mumbled. 

“I’m just fine,” Remus promised him. “Is there anything you need? Anything I can get for you or do?”

“Stay with me,” Sirius pleaded. Even half-dazed with bloodshot eyes, Sirius still managed a convincing impression of a puppy.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Remus said. To prove it, he shifted off his knees to sit beside the bed, making himself comfortable.

“That’s good…because I’m going to have to piss soon, and I don’t think I can make it to the loo without falling face first into the toilet.”

Even as he wiped tears from his eyes, Remus chuckled. “Caradoc must have you on the good pain potions if you’re _this_ stoned,” he said, trying to keep the mood light, even if he wanted to break down and sob, or scream while he punched a hole through the wall.

“Mmhmm…” Sirius said, closing his eyes, though a crooked smile tugged at his split lips. “Straight from Madam Pomfrey’s cupboards at Hogwarts.”

“That really is the good stuff,” Remus agreed. He knew as much from a great deal of personal experience.

“Not because of the potions though,” Sirius said. “James…he splinched my bloody knee Apparating. ‘Course I can’t even be properly angry at him for it since he saved my life and all…the wanker.”

Remus flinched at the reminder of Sirius’s injuries. What, he wondered, had he been doing while James and Peter were risking their own lives to rescue Sirius? Probably buying drinks for twitchy werewolves in a dodgy pub, hoping they might give him some scrap of useful information if he poured enough beer into them. 

“I’m sorry,” Remus whispered, speaking so quietly he wasn’t sure Sirius would even hear him. He half hoped he wouldn’t. “I should have been there, should have come for you, I’m so, so sorry.”

Sirius did hear him though. He opened tired grey eyes again and stared at Remus. “Not your fault. I was careless and the info was bad…” He blinked and even through the cuts and bruises Remus could see something between resignation and determination settle on Sirius’s features. “This is war…bad things happen. Just…hold me, Remus…please…I’m tired, and I want you to hold me…”

“Of course,” Remus replied. He let go of Sirius’s hand for a moment and climbed to his feet to kick off his shoes and jacket. His clothes were dirty and he felt filthy all over, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Sirius’s side long enough to change, let alone to take a shower. 

“We need to talk,” Sirius murmured, his voice sounding muzzier by the syllable. “There are things…I need to…need to tell you…”

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Remus promised, knowing neither of them were in any shape for a long conversation right now. He climbed into bed and scooted over until he was lightly pressed against Sirius’s back, careful not to touch the worst of his remaining injuries. He draped an arm around Sirius’s waist, so thankful that he could do this, that he hadn’t lost this man he loved so, so much.

“Just rest for now,” Remus whispered. “I’m right here.”

Sirius gave a sleepy, contented sigh and sagged against him, asleep almost instantly. There would be no rest for Remus though. Exhausted though he was in every way, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He would lie there with Sirius in his arms, reveling in the blessing that that was even as his mind wandered through horrifying “what-ifs” for hour and hours. All because Sirius was right.

This was war. Bad things happened. They’d known when they’d agreed to join the Order that it would be dangerous, that either or both of them could easily lose their lives in this fight. It was one thing to know the risks on a logical level though, and another thing entirely to skirt so close to that reality. Especially since Remus had been far away and entirely ignorant of his lover’s plight, unable to help or protect Sirius at all. 

Next time, they might not be so lucky. 

Remus buried his nose in Sirius’s hair and tried not to think about all the things that could go terribly wrong for them. No one was ever guaranteed a long and happy life free from pain. Remus and Sirius of all people knew that, had known it since they were children. 

_Enjoy it while it lasts,_ he told himself, curling closer around Sirius. _However long that might be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that’s the end of this story, the first multi-chapter story I began in this fandom, and the first one I’ve finished. Yay! I hope you’ve all enjoyed it, and if you have questions, comments, or other things you’d like to discuss about _First Blood_ (or whatever) beyond the comment section here, please feel free to reach out over on my Tumblr [@January3693](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/january3693). I’m still pretty shit at Tumblr in general, but I’m trying to get better.
> 
> I’m hoping to turn my attention to _The Dog You Feed_ for a bit, but I have outlined a story that’s pretty much a direct follow-up to this one. It will focus mostly on Remus and will take up some of the threads left (purposefully) dangling at the end of _First Blood_. It will still be pretty dark and there will be some violence, but there will also be a lot more Remus and Sirius together, still (mostly) happy in their relationship, you know, before everything inevitably falls apart. Some things may change by the time I start putting it out, but for now here’s a brief summary to entice you.
> 
> _Fighting Words_  
>  When Remus Lupin agreed to infiltrate the pack of the most dangerous werewolf in Britain on behalf of the Order of the Phoenix, he thought he knew what he was getting into. It was going to be dangerous, horrifying, and potentially deadly. What he didn’t expect was to uncover long buried secrets about his own past, secrets that threaten to ruin his present and destroy his future.


End file.
